Outlaw Star (in regards to an old post)

Remember that my only goal here is to keep the ship as detailed but ass low poly ass possible
(preferable under 3 sections of 800 each).

Now from what I understand the middle fins stay put while the outer fins spin (the upper fin rotates clockwise and the outer fin counterclockwise, there are some small arrows that show this) when the ship moves (or when the LDS is active).

Other animations that we can include are the missile pod doors opening when you select that specific weapon (front and lateral) and infiltration pod coming up (in this case a dock port when the docking autopilot is activated) or the forward guns coming up into firing position. My opinion would be on the missile pods and the dock port.

I’m going to have to ask you, Second Chance, what kind of model animation do I need to use and how many pog scripts for calling the animations am I allowed per ship section(only one I believe)?
I know how to create animations in max by using keas. I believe that this is the type the game uses.


When a boss says “Go!� the leader says “Let’s move out!�

Actually the infiltration pod isnt a kind of dockport, its more like a drill. The ship has 3 dockports, one is somewhere behind lower turret, and the other two are on either side of the ship just before the side missile pods. I have made a short video that shows the locations and animations of many of these items as well as an alternative to the rear fins. I tried to get the best quality with the smallest file size possible to cut down on the dl time.

newarzone.low-ping.com/user/3039 ... etails.wmv

Thanks! That would be of grate use. The alternative to the fins is from what I can understand an bigger engine for in atmosphere flight. I already made those fins, and besides it looks cooler whit them.

community.webshots.com/photo/282 ... 5635PHbXgc

The dock port is actually the one I was referring to. It’s right between the turret and the drill.
This ship has multiple turrets: one lower turret (that you can see firing in the clip), two lateral rear-facing guns, and two identical rear-facing turrets (one behind the cotpit and one at the base of the top engine).

One thing you did not include is those forward guns (on either side of the cotpit, right behind the forward missile pods).

If you have noting too do try creating some tags for the ship. It’s just too read.

When a boss says “Go!� the leader says “Let’s move out!�

Looking good so far. By the way, the turret behind the cockpit does rotate 360 degrees. unfortunately I havent found any clips of fwd guns being used, but I'll keep looking.

<hr noshade size="1">Smith - "12 docking turrets, 15 quadpack launchers, 6 antimatter pbc's, and 2 turret fighters, all mounted on a megafreighter."

Cal - "Ya think that'll be enough? I mean we're just going to the store."

Smith - "You know you're right, I'd better mount on some antimatter streams."

You'll need to split the model up into the seperate pieces that need to be animated. Like; if each one of those cone sections with the fins on them need to rotate differently, or in opposite directions, each section will have to be a seperate mesh. But if they all rotate at the same speed, they only need one animation channel to control them all.

Animation for EoC is done using Pog and consists of a Pog script defining the animation channels and a Lightwave avatar scene containing two keyframes; a start frame and an end frame. Since there are only two keyframes, and timing is controlled through the Pog script, you only need two animation frames in the Lightwave avatar scene. For instance; say you want something to rotate 50 degrees in 3 seconds. At frame 1 (the start frame), the rotation would be set at 0. At frame 2 (the end frame) the rotation would be set at 50. The game will then create all the in-between frames and display them over the specified period of time. The same goes for position and scale animation. (Please be aware that you can rotate something more than 360 degrees in one frame. You could have a single animation frame that rotates something 1000 degrees or more over several seconds to simulate a spinning object.)

You can have as many animation channels per avatar scene as you need (theoretically). Or you could have everything run on the same channel. But each animation that needs to be activated seperately, or timed differently from the others, will need it's own animation channel. I'm sure you can define all the channels in a single Pog script.

And remember that animation for EoC is mostly done using specially named Lightwave nulls (dummy objects) that have the object to be animated attached to them. The null names must exactly match the animation channel names set up in Pog and will contain numbers to control the timing (duration) of the animation.

You can decide to have either a custom game script that calls your animation channels at the appropriate times, or, you could use one of the game's preset animation channels. These are channels that are activated by the game's control inputs (i.e. joystick buttons, axes, etc.) and are listed in the Graphic SDK, along with some other good info on animating avatars.

(Also, unless the Max to Lightwave scene exporter has been finished I'm afraid the animation will have to be set up in Lightwave.)

You're going to have to ask MajorTom about coding the channel scripts, but let me know if you have any more questions on the modeling and setup side.

mailto:second_chance@cox.net
The Ultimate Guide To Modding: I-War 2 - Edge Of Chaos
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The dockport that you mention (the one between the turret and the drill) isnt actually a dockport, it's just a docking lock. I found some more clips of the fwd cockpit turret, engines, and docks. Sorry nothing with the fwd side guns yet but I'll keep looking.

I was thinking that you might want to make the turrets seperate from the ship itself, that might make things easier (at least when it comes to the nulls). Also, and I'm not 100% on this, but I think that the ring that the rear turret is mounted on might be rotatable. I havent found any evidence of this but it does seem logical since it would provide turret coverage of the entire rear of the ship. But for now it can remain sationary, due to the fact that it would extremely hard to make it work.

<hr noshade size="1">Smith - "12 docking turrets, 15 quadpack launchers, 6 antimatter pbc's, and 2 turret fighters, all mounted on a megafreighter."

Cal - "Ya think that'll be enough? I mean we're just going to the store."

Smith - "You know you're right, I'd better mount on some antimatter streams."