Infantry Improvement Project

[RyanCrierie]

Tell me, what's special about this pic? [;)]

[RyanCrierie]

Or this pic?

[benpark]

No more mirrored textures?

Looks good. We need more infantry mods!

[Blond_Knight]

Its been a while but I was thinking about modding some of the models to wear the M43 caps.

[benpark]

Caps would be great for German and Soviets. Not very safety conscious, but it would be good for variety.

I did a basic fallschijrmjager a while back. That's one of the needed model changes, along with volkssturm and some Soviet variety. Once I get the trees done, I'm itching to try some infantry stuff. I'm glad Ryan (who is actually good and capable at this stuff) can tackle the learning curve for us!

[Blond_Knight]

Id love to replace all those russian helmets with pilotka's and ushanka's.
Ok before I plunked down the money for FM I tried the trial.  Making the M43 cap was no problem but the only animating Ive ever done was for CFS2 using Aircraft Animator so somebody please help me out here. 
 I deleted the helmet from the model, created the cap and placed it on the head and added it to the head group.  I was assuming it would adopt the animation of the group and stay on the guys head, but it remained static while the rest of the model went through its animation.
Does the whole model need to be reanimated? 

[Mraah]

ORIGINAL: Blond_Knight

Id love to replace all those russian helmets with pilotka's and ushanka's.
Ok before I plunked down the money for FM I tried the trial.  Making the M43 cap was no problem but the only animating Ive ever done was for CFS2 using Aircraft Animator so somebody please help me out here. 
I deleted the helmet from the model, created the cap and placed it on the head and added it to the head group.  I was assuming it would adopt the animation of the group and stay on the guys head, but it remained static while the rest of the model went through its animation.
Does the whole model need to be reanimated? 

Ok ... The final step is to assign the "bones" to your new hat mesh. It won't automatically assign your new mesh to the bones, or skeleton.

You'll have to select your new hat and then goto the skeleton tab and right-click, and assign the bone to the mesh.

Now, I haven't played around much with FM (I'm an MS3D user) so you'll have to experiment with which bone belongs to which animation.
My guess would be the "Anim_MatrixFrame_Bip01_Head" or somewhere around there.

When I replaced the ATR-Rifle with a Panzershrek I had to figure out what belonged to what. There maybe a way to show which vertex points belong to which bones ... this might be called the "weights".

The other guys may have better info for you, like spellir74 ... he did some playing around with FM.

Again, the best experience I have with modelling/animation is using MS3D ... but I've always begun from stratch and understood this better.

Rob

[Blond_Knight]

well I'll be.  Thanks for the info Mraah. I just did a test with a flat cylinder on top of one of the german riflemen, looked rather like one of those easter island statues with the funny hat. I got some warping of the helmet due to accidentally selecting too many vertices.  It aint pretty but it works well enough as a proof of concept for me. Now I just have to wait for pay day.
Now back to Left 4 Dead.

[spellir74]

Hello all. Had bad computer problems. I'm smart and I'm an angry big mouth; consequently I have hackers and their trojans and worms--it hit a critical mass.

But I am back now.

Just did the Sherman 75mm (from Mraah's orig and stock XML) and the sink hole recon 221s _with ALL ANIMATIONS_; releasing soon!

Next the HalfTrks _with animations (gun recoil and damage)_ can be finished.

I do have one blind spot though: light-angles on moved geometry. Anyone know a short cut?

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I've been sampling wines, as I often do, so I don't know if this animation tutorial will come out right.

[Yes the Rutherford Hill Merlot is worth it; But the Red Diamond is still my traditional favorite.

Now you'll say "when you sample wines you're not supposed to swallow all of it".

Well to that I say 'that's because you're not a professional... hiccup...]

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Fragmotion animation tutorial here:

m.asp?m=2054126&mpage=1&key=

[RyanCrierie]

Okay, here's an early release of the Flaktruppen:

I'm not exactly sure how to set up the weapons and morale tables to accurately represent a bunch of anti-aircraft gunners who have been told to grab a Kar98k and help the infantry shore up some defensive line; so I gave them Volkssturm 1945 weapons; remember, these guys don't have a MG-34 or MG-42 to help them....

Right now, only the basic "guy holding a rifle" model is in; hopefully, I can add others like SMGs later.

To use, unzip into your DATA/INFANTRY folder.

[RyanCrierie]

And here they are in the game:

[Blond_Knight]

Ah thats what I needed thanks for the info spellir74.  Now if you happened to have time to type out a "How to apply textures" posting I could get this guy presentable.

[benpark]

Excellent stuff, Ryan. I'm really happy to see some new infantry mods.

[spellir74]

Blonde knight, I put a texture tutotrial up under "mods/'frgmt tutor'".

I don't want to hijack Ryan's infanterie thread.

texture tutorial

m.asp?m=2054127&mpage=1&key=

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But after all that, I don't know if it is what you wanted.

It is all I know how to do.

FM site has some tutorials.