Here's a question for some of you more experienced modelers out there. How would I go about making animated/moving models. Here's a few examples of what I want to do.

1. Make ships flying around a city
2. Have birds flying around
3. Make animated water similar to the water on Manaan
4. Making a cool looking waterfall, as well as the splashing of water at the bottom
5. Make a skybox rotate!

Number 3 & 4 would be animated textures/shaders, not models. Not sure about the rest, although I don't think an animated skybox is possible.

The only way is to use existing models that have animation. I used some animated ships from Taris in one of my modules, but it was pretty difficult to implement.

As far as making my animated skybox, I know it's possible, well uhhh, at least in theory. I saw a module that was a circular room with several cone shaped objects moving around the area. All I want to make 2 skybox models. The first one (outer sphere/square) is your normal skybox of a sky and buildings/terrain, but the second one (inner sphere/square) is just a bunch of clouds. The second model will only be rotating making an allusion that the skybox is animated.

Ok thanks Sithspecter, I'll try it out once I get the walkmesh working and the area into TSL.

You can make clouds move without having to animate anything. Just work with the texture

what do you mean?

You might could use MDLOps 6.0/6.1 to make an animated placeable skybox, then put it in your module. But it's probably going to be a pain to do, animated things usually don't like to cooperate well.

Would there be a tutorial on this anywhere?

Not really. It's just something you have to experiment with at this point. I'd advise that you check out some placeables that have a constant animation, and base everything off that.

Ok, thanks. I'll take a look at it.

How exactly do you make the animated textures?

How exactly do you make the animated textures?

It's done by adding this to the txi:


proceduretype cycle
defaultwidth 256 (width of single frame)
defaultheight 256(height of single frame)
numx 2(both this and numy are for how many columns and rows you want to have)
numy 2
fps 48(how fast it goes through the frames)


The texture would look like this(with the above -along with the two lines to make sure the saber appears right):

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v635/KomaB1ack/BlueSaberTex.png)


Though it would get a lot more complex for something like a computer panel, if one wanted a lot of detail.

Thanks!

It's done by adding this to the txi:


proceduretype cycle
defaultwidth 256 (width of single frame)
defaultheight 256(height of single frame)
numx 2(both this and numy are for how many columns and rows you want to have)
numy 2
fps 48(how fast it goes through the frames)


The texture would look like this(with the above -along with the two lines to make sure the saber appears right):

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v635/KomaB1ack/BlueSaberTex.png)


Though it would get a lot more complex for something like a computer panel, if one wanted a lot of detail.


This is what I was referring to, thanks.

Number 3 & 4 would be animated textures/shaders, not models. Not sure about the rest, although I don't think an animated skybox is possible.

The Malachor V skybox is obviously animated - witness the lightning in the distance every so often that takes place.

I'm glad this thread is up because it leads to a question I was wondering about. I'd like to up the resolution of said animation and add a variety of different lightning strikes. Seeing the lightning strike in the same place twice kind of ruins the effect they were going for.

My thread-related questions:

1) Is there a limit to how many frames there can be in the texture?

2) What's the maximum size of an animated texture?

1) Is there a limit to how many frames there can be in the texture?


Since you can set any number for the numx/numy line, there isn't a limit.


2) What's the maximum size of an animated texture?


The size of the entire texture(frames and all), depends on how big you want your frames. If they are just 256x256, and you wanted say, eight frames, you have a texture size of 2048x2048. But at depends on how you line them up. Anyway, having more frames amounts to a larger texture, and it might make some systems run slower(depending on what the texture is used for). That would be why any of the animation done for textures in the vanilla games, are simple blinking lights, and in some cases, scrolling text(such as on Telos).

what order does it cycle through the four frames? Does it go clockwise from top left? Or does it go 1) Top Left, 2) Top Right, 3) Bottom Left, 4) Bottom Right?

what order does it cycle through the four frames? Does it go clockwise from top left? Or does it go 1) Top Left, 2) Top Right, 3) Bottom Left, 4) Bottom Right?

Well like you posted; Top Left to Top Right. Then Bottom Left to right.

@SithHolocron: You might get cooler effects by using a script that places a few nodes. Then you can do a lighting effect that jumps from one node to another.

Much like a player shoots lighting at his enemies. Perhaps with a good script you could randomize the lighting bolts, how they jump between nodes.

Or add a few selfmade placesables, who just are flat planes, standing up and using an animated texture. Though that means ofcourse they'll stay at the same spot.
But again scripting could help out. Make placeable; let it do its thing, then destroy it. Make a new placeable on another place; let it do its thing... etc etc etc... :p