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Export Scripts - Part 7

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Advanced Animation

1. Supermodels

   Animation data accounts for huge amount of a model's total size. In order to steal animations from another, pre-exported, model we use this function. When a model is assigned a supermodel, the game engine simply loads the animation data from the super model on to the pieces that have the same name in the current model. We can then, for example, create and animate a complete model for a panther, but only create the model for a leopard and reference the panther's animation. We can also over-write either one or a group of animations from the merged animation track by animating them separately on the current model. A good instance of this in our game was the "old man" animations for Neverwinter… where we used the main human animations in general, but added pausing and moving animations to the old man model.

   If you have any problems with this there are a couple of things to check:

   1. Make sure the names of the parts match.
   2. The position and rotation of the pivot points with respect to the two models should be close. It's often best to make a new model that shares an animation from a copy of the old file.
   3. Position keys will not scale with a different sized model. For example, we did use the human animation as a supermodel for the dwarf characters. Rotation animations do not need any scaling in order to be transferred to a smaller character, but position keys do. The only thing we can do to change the height characteristic of a shorter/taller supermodel recipient is calculate the ratio of height change and enter that into its Animation Scale value on the Aurabase. In this case, you can animate the position of the "RootDummy"

   This solution does work for different sized models, but you may have to tweak some settings or override some animations for the feet to be correctly placed in any movement animations.

2. Transtime

   There's a small number associated with each animation available on the Aurabase called "transtime". This is a per-second value of how much mixing a previous animation does in order to fade into this animation. I personally haven't played too much with this number, as the default suffices enough to make most things look good.

3. Anim Root

   This is similar to the "supermodel" idea, except you can override a selection of hierarchy (from one node down) in your current model for another model's data file. For example, you can take the bicep piece of a model, and give it the name of another model, which has the bicep moving in the way you want it to. This is how we created overlapping torch holding animations for when the character walks, runs or does any other animation.

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