DIRECTION, CAMERA & MOVEMENT
- CHARACTERIZATION -
I don't want to go through the hassel of exaplaining how to model, skin and animate a charater in Anim8or so download this small anim8or file (in Zip file) here: Boxman. It includes the models, figures, sequences, and scenes necessary for this tutorial
If you want to make your own character after this tutorial follow this guidlines:
NOTE: Models are used in the tutorial for the purpose of teaching, these models are not allowed to be used elsewhere without consent.
- One mesh must be attatch to a signle bone comming from the root bone.
- You then branch out bones from that bone. You must use weight painting only.
- Do not move you model in figure mode, if you want to move, go to object mode move it there.
Now let's begin. Start up Cre8or and click "Assign Anim8or File"
Assign the Boxman An8 File you should have downloaded. You should have these items:
Double-click on "boundry" and go to "Edit Physical." M ake it "Static Mesh"
Do the same for the "floor" object/entity
Now open the "Boxman" Figure, go to "Edit Physical" Make it a cube and set the "Friction" to "0"
Now while in the boxman figure add an event, go to "Add Event" -> "Entity"-> "Create"
Now drag an action from the button "Character" -> "Create Tracks":
The default is "1" which is what we want. A (Animation) Track is a layer on which a sequence can be played. The usefulness of having more than one track is that you can play the shooting animtion and walking animation at the same time.
Now that we're set up for animation let's make sure the camera's in 3rd person. Drag the camera action from "Camera" -> "3rd Person" into this same "Create Event"
Now set these parameters
"Height" is the vertical displacement from the players position
"Distance" is the horizontal distnace away from the player.
"Height Offset" is the camera's eye's offset. How the eye sits on the player.
"Angle Offset" is the camera's view point angle. Typically it's gona be "90"
degrees
Now add another event. The step event.
Normally I'd use a "Sphere" for my character, which would allow my character to walk up steps, but I used a Cube because that shape is more fitting. Anyways, we want the character to aways face a direction horizontally because the character will rarely be walking up vertical walls. There's a nice neat action called "Stand Straight" which effectively does this. Add this action to the "step event"
Now it asks for a stand sequence, basically a sequence in which you character is idle.
This little list box will help decide which sequence to use:
So we want to use Sequence # "0" because that's "Idle"
Before you test this out make sure you go to the "Scene" "Level1" and turn off "Goundgrid"
If you test it out the character should just stand still and do nothing. Let's make it move.
Add the <Up> keyboard event:
Now let's move it forward, add the "Move Forward" action.
The sequence we will use will be "1 - Walk" so set the sequence to "1"
Go back to the "Step Event" and add this action:
This is a special kind of damping that can be applied to different axii.
For instance you don't want you character to slide everywhere, but you want your character to to jump up and down smoothly. If you run the game now you can move the character forward. But you can't turn. Let's fix that.
Add a new event for the <Left> Keyboard key. Now add this action, and keep the "3.5" value.
Add a new event for the <Right> Keyboard key. Now add this action again, and set the value to "-3.5"
That should take care of turning the character. If you want the character to walk backwards, just use the "Move Forward" action and set the "force" to "-100"
Some more notes, different size of models will require differnt forces, if you model doesn't move either you have not made it into a shape or you must increase the "force" more. Next tutorial will be more on sequences.
Tutorials Page
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