Animations and Movement

Animations and Movement

An animation is a .5ds beside the model, keyed by frame name: whatever the model has that the animation names, it moves. It all lives in the 5DS Animation sidebar tab.

Making one

1. New Animation starts an action on the selected objects.
2. Put the scene on the game's rate with the tab's 25 fps button — one frame every 40 ms. This is not optional: see below.
3. Pose and key as you would anything in Blender. Fit Scene Range pulls the scene's start and end onto what is actually keyed.
4. File ▸ Export ▸ 5DS Mafia Animation — or tick Write Its Animation when exporting the model, and it is written beside it under the same name. Leave Write Its Track on and the .tck holding the travel goes beside it too.

Important

Twenty-five frames a second, and nothing else. An animation numbers its keys in frames and carries no rate of its own: the game spaces them 40 ms apart and there is nowhere in the file to say otherwise. Measured rather than assumed — a .tck states its length in milliseconds and covers the same animation as the .5ds beside it, and in 272 of the game's 283 pairs the two come to exactly 40 ms a frame. So a scene keyed at 24 or 30 means one thing in Blender and another in game, and it is refused rather than written at the wrong speed — by the animation export, the movement export, Check 5DS Animation, and a model exported with Write Its Animation. The 25 fps button is the one-press fix, and it leaves your keys on the frames they are on.

What the export will tell you

Message	What it means
Eased keys	The game walks straight from one key to the next and the format keeps no easing, so anything eased plays as a straight line there. The keys are written on the frames you put them on — nothing is resampled — and the report says how many are eased. Set them to Linear to see in Blender what the game will play.
Long turns	A rotation of more than half a circle between two keys plays the short way round in game. Fix Long Rotation Turns splits them.
The animated object count	A model carries a number saying how many of its frames an animation drives. It follows what the scene has keyed on its own; pin it for a number of your own.

Event cues

Cues are what the game listens for while an animation plays — a footstep, a sound, a script hook. They live on a Dummy called notify, which the character preset already builds. Select it, stand on the frame you want, and add one from the tab. Named events carry free text the game hands straight to whatever is listening.

Note

An even number of cues on a frame makes the game read them one value out of step — the check says so.

The movement track

A .tck beside the animation holds where the actor travels while it plays. In Blender it is an empty marked as the movement track, with the model parented under it: key the empty, and the travel is what you keyed.

The tab names which empty is carrying it. The export refuses plainly if the model is not under it — the travel would never reach it.