Just showing off my first custom fp animations for the assault rifle



How is it? Probably really crappy but oh well, I only watched 1 tutorial and this is what I cam up with.

I can release to halomaps archive if anybody wants it.

Hopefully I can soon create my own original weapon tagset instead of using overused SPv3/SPv2 tags all the time yay!

Edit: How do I make it so that the melee and grenade throw effects aren't executed immediately so I can time it to match up with the animation? (I think like with hugeass's slow-as-hell melee where the damage effect is called upon only when the ar hits the target and not immediately when you press F like in my video?)
Edited by nihao123456ftw on Sep 10, 2012 at 04:41 AM

Yeah I thought so with the melee and grenade toss... I find it really hard to animate left hand because it isn't linked to anything. Melee was hardest for me, maybe I shouldn't have tried something so complex as my first animations...

Nihao, Kai-Lan!

That is not bad at all for your first attempt.

A few pointers:

1. Attach your left wrist controller to your frame magazine Then when you do your reloads you simply animate the left hand to grab the mag, and then animate the frame mag to come out and move around and whatnot. That way the magazine drags the hand around with it and you will have perfect contact between the fingers and mag. (trust me, your animations will improve 100% if you do them this way.) This will also help tremendously with your melee animation.

2. You don't seem to be using overlays, you need to make an overlays animation. (if you don't know how then let me know and I will explain it.

3. For your walking animation (first-person moving) you should try to have more movement. I found that the best way to animate walking is to divide your total number of frame into four parts (in other words place your start and finish frames and then put three evenly spaced frame in between) in the first of those three your weapon should move down and to the right (slightly) the middle frame should be back to the base position, and your third frame should be down and to the right (the same amount as you went to the left.

4. Your ready animation is pretty good, but the charging handle should "jump" back to its original position after being pulled. It takes way to long in yours

Thank you so much for your feedback, I will try to incorporate your suggestions into my animations. As for overlays: no I don't know what overlays are because the tutorial didn't explain what they did

No problem, I know how hard it can be to get useful advice when you are trying to learn something new.

The overlay animation is really easy and it helps a lot. It is basically what controles the slight movement of your weapons when you look around and such (just watch the normal halo animations in-game when you look around if you don't know what I mean)

You need a 9 frame animation, I would start by selecting everything and then using the "set key" button to set the keys on each frame, then edit from there for this animation. (don't do that on other animations though... only this one)

Basically each frame represents the farthest that the weapon will move in any particular direction when you look that direction or whatever.

frame 0: This is simply your default position

frame 1: This frame is for moving forwards, so most people move the weapon back a bit for this frame

frame 2: moving backwards, move the weapon forward a bit

frame 3: moving left, move the weapon to the left, roll it very slightly left

frame 4: moving right, same (except right instead of left.)

frame 5: looking left, roll it a bit left and move it VERY slightly left.

frame 6: looking right, same (except right isntead of left)

frame 7: looking up, move the weapon up a bit and rotate it up a little

frame 8: looking down, same (except down instead of up)

frame 9: long-term firing recoil, move the weapon back a bit (an you can rotate up a little too if you want)

That is how I do them anyway, you can play around with it and decide how you like it, but I would start by following those steps.

After you create the animation simply export it as "first-person overlays.jmo" and compile your animations
Edited by Yoda on Sep 10, 2012 at 05:44 PM

Even though the left hand isn't linked to anything, try using link constraints. They're basically linking without changing the hierarchy of the objects and bones.

Linking the left wrist controller to the frame mag works just as well (if not better) and is easier. It also doesn't affect the hierarchy. You can even link it in your some of your animations and not in others and it will still work fine.

Get into a habit of using link constraints is however, better in the long run. You can link anything with link constraints that does not mess up hierarchy. But hey, that's just my opinion.

Oh that's not my walking animation and I just realised that the walking animations weren't working when I tried to test my overlay animations ingame. I realised that I might have to export as .jmo for overlays not .jma

Ah, so that is why there didn't seem to be any motion in the walking animation. lol.

basically everything is .jma except for moving and overlays, which are .jmo

Haha I used to watch it with my sister too!

Hmm I'm having some issues, the overlay animations for looking are working, but when I move in a direction every single frame in the animation is played...

That is strange, can you post a vid of what is happening?

I have never seen anything like that. I honestly have no idea what could be causing it. sry.

bump because I need to know this stuff.



You might be using your overlays as your moving animation. I know this response is lollate but I only started animating yesterday (and needed to know how to make overlays today).


I finished getting my own first first person animations in-game:
http://www.xfire.com/video/5fc557
Edited by Jesse on May 20, 2013 at 02:31 PM