Using character studio Bipeds

[Aztec]

Hi guys, is it at all possible to use a 3dmax character studio biped ingame (for animations and for the models themselves) or does the skeleton have to be valves?

Cheers

 

[naaier]

well, you can use the max biped, as long as the pelvis bone (bip01) is renamed to the valve name. the problem is that you wont be able to use any of the valve animations. if you create youre own animation sets, and reference the model to use said animation sets when you compile the model, youll have animations. sounds easy? forget it. there is still naming all your animations to match the valve animation names, setting up all the calls, it'll become a nightmare that you'de wish you had never started. ok, you say, maybe rename the max biped bones to match the valve rig names. that too will work, but youre animations will be so ****ed up that you'll think you're on acid. everything will be twisted and warped. why? because of bone size, position and rotation. the two rigs are not the same.

this does not mean that its impossable, it just means that not worth the 50 hours effort just to get one custom animation working with the max rig.

dont go down this road, its nasty and frustrating, beleive me, I went down it.

 

[audi100]

I have created some custom animations with the max biped rig it worked well, you don't have to name them like the valve anims if they are custom but you have to assign those calls later on in your qc.

If you plan to use valve anims better use the skelletons from the source sdk and build your model around them so you don't have to resize repositon those bones that much.

 

[Stormy]

Im guessing that you could use some valve animations + a few custom ones?
What about creation of your own rig using bones or broken mesh? They would also have to be renamed?

Secondly does it work much like weapons? Having to have one smd file for each animation?.

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

Yes. One for each animation. You can call the bones what you want, and the animations what you want, as long as you reference them correctly in the qc

 

[Stormy]

I justed look through the SDK at man_06 i belive it is. The only smd's in there are.
Ragdoll
referance
Lod

Are the animation SMD's keped in a seperate folder?

 

[naaier]

just remember to rename your root bone to "valve_bip01". otherwise the engine wont know how to place the model in relation to the world.
yes, the animations are all packed into seperate mdl files. if you decompile a human mdl, you will see in the qc these kind of lines:

$includemodel "humans/male_shared.mdl"
$includemodel "humans/male_ss.mdl"
$includemodel "humans/male_gestures.mdl"
$includemodel "humans/male_postures.mdl"

those are all the animation mdl's that the model will use (the ones above are for the civilian npc's)

combines use a different set, as do the police.

here is a short video of the rasta character I made doing a dance. http://rapidshare.de/files/15585454/rasta_dancing.avi.html its a custom animation and I included it into an mdl called " custom_anims.mdl " and added the call: $includemodel "humans/custom_anims.mdl" in the qc.