First off yes, I have read the tut and anything else I could find. I just have a few questions.

1. How do I make sure that the guy actually holds the gun or lightsaber?

2. I could have missed something, but I didn't find an answer to how to make a sprint, jump attack, back attack ( I assume 10 frames), walk, idle or basepose anim and how many frames they are, so if someone could tell me or redirect me that would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Some things i noticed when animating:

-Frames don't matter. A final attack can be 1 frame if you want
-Key frame the parts which are important in the anim, ending at 1, 10 or 20
-The weapon is hold by hp_weapons. Animating it might do funny things.
-Not only rotations are possible, also scaling, translating, uving and moddeling (haven't checked last one yet)

Good luck, and just try anims.. They're buggy little things, but definetaly not hard to make..

Thanks, that answered the first one.

DO we actually need to keep the clone on it and put the texture on, or no?

One other question, when beggining an attack animation, what pose do I begin from, the base pose or idol, or the "stand straight up, arms out" pose (That might be the same as the base pose, but I have the base pose as a 10 frame transition from the "stand straight up, arms out" to the beggining of the idol).

Fluffy_the_ic wrote:DO we actually need to keep the clone on it and put the texture on, or no?

The only thing that matters in character animation is the bones, however you may still want to keep the body attached, or add the texture, so you can see how you animation will effect the player model, when it plays.

If you download U3D and the msh import plugin for it then you can have a look at the first frame of animations located in:
\BF2_ModTools\assets\Animations

Since the plugin doesn't import animations yet, you'll have to settle for viewing the first frame, but it's still better than nothing and provides good reference for where you might want to begin.
You don't want to start your animation from the T-pose though, at least move the arms down, the game engine will try it's best to blend your animations together ingame.