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This really is for more experience modeller who knows the things and terms I am talking about but the novice can also benefit as well.

From working on the ATAP as well as the Spec OPs units I have been doing I have learned a few things that I was always told shouldn't or couldn't be handled by XSI/Pandemic as far as animation and enveloping is concerned.

Enveloping.
Was always told you should only envelope to one bone.
For somethings this is a good rule to follow but they are mostly mechanical type of animations, walkers, flyers, doors, animated props and the like. For units though they will deform better in game if some of the vertices are enveloped between two bones/ Legs and shoulders especially.
Using the smooth tool in the enveloping paint tool is great for this.
Helpful hint for enveloping: Put a key on all the bones on the first frame, with this you can then move, rotate or whatever the bones to see how the envelope works in certain positions and adjust the weight blending so it looks good. To get back to the base pose just move the timeline slider and it will go back but the envelope changes will stay. Important make sure "AUTO" is off on the animation tool bar.

Animation:
Linear vs Spline:
Was told all animations should be made linear.
Once again this really depends upon what you are animating. Some animation only look good if the animation is changed to linear. But Splines work just fine in game and make for better animations.

IK vs FK Animation.
Once again the understanding was all animation needed to be FK to export properly.
Truth is they can be either one or the other or a combination of both. I used a combination of both to do the death animation for the ATAP.


Incidentally it was a fluke that the music worked out as it did. And yes some of the animations aren't done yet.

Make sure the FK box is checked on the animation export.

Why use IK over FK for animation, it is a lot easier to do poses and movement using IK animation and if you use constraining objects and set a neutral pose on them it is even easier because your constaining object will have a set of neutral numbers of 0 which makes it real easy to go back to the beginning.

Will add more to this as I remember or find out more things but just wanted to at least get a start on thing.

The help files for XSI as well as websites listed in the FAQ are still the best source of information on how to do things in XSI.

Just to be sure, multi-bone enveloping works for SWBF(II)? I was told it doesnt work, so i never tried.

Yes it works for SWBFII, I only mod II so I am not sure about I but it should

FragMe! wrote:...I have learned a few things that I was always told shouldn't or couldn't be handled by XSI/Pandemic as far as animation and enveloping is concerned.
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Was always told you should only envelope to one bone.
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Was told all animations should be made linear.
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Who was telling you this?!

FragMe! wrote:Once again the understanding was all animation needed to be FK to export properly.

In my experience with the exporter you can only export FK. You can animate however you want in XSI(with IK and/or FK) but you have to plot IK before export to ensure that it'll work properly; plotted IK = FK.

If you are wondering about the difference between IK/FK:
Animating the bones = FK
Animating the effector = IK

If the animation/keys are on the bones then you have FK animation regardless of how the animation got there. The IK handle of an IK chain is the effector; animation on the effector is discarded on export therefore your animation must be FK to export.

I used a combination of both to do the death animation for the ATAP.

The front leg was FK the rest of it was IK
The exporter takes care of it for you, really.



as for the other some of it was in docs other was mini

FragMe! wrote:Yes it works for SWBFII, I only mod II so I am not sure about I but it should

Im 99% shure that it doesnt work, you can envelope to multiple bones in XSI but ingame theyll be attached to one bone.
When i enveloped the clonecommando i attached the shoulderpads 50-50 on ribcage and upperarm and they were always moved with just one bone.
Also in swbf 2all animprops that have been enveloped to multiple bones in swbf 1 dont have a "-softskin" command in the msh.option anymore.

I noticed, that, when you envelope to more bones per point you get "munging HW softskinned/SW hardskinned" or something like this in the munge window.