help needed for game animations

[ross_coe]

Hey folks,
I've recently been talked into making some games characters for a group of people who study game programming at my uni. They asked me to make a bunch of models (wizards, zombies, vampires etc....).
Anyways, I've attached a pic of the zombie.....they game is supposed to run on the quake2 engine so the poly count has to stay at about 1000 faces.

Where I need help is with animating the different actions. I'm using max5 (with character studio avaliable too), and I'm wondering if it's best to use max's own bones, or character studios biped/physique thingys. And if anyone has any tips or knows of any online tutorials for creating game specific animations in max, I'd appreciate the help.

Cheers everyone :D

[Emperor]

Wheeeooou...nice frekin zombie man...real good texture job. He looks way over 1000 polys if u dont look at the wire :D!

Go to Polycount (http://www.polycount.com)

GO to tutorials for Quake 3. There is a tutorial on how u set up the pibed for a low poly character. Now the animations are a different thing. In that tut they use quakes .bip files for animation so u are using ready animations for the game models. I dont know if such a thing exists in Quake 2 but if it does use that. If not...wel...the usual procedure in a game is to make one animation file that contains all the animations such as run, walk, crouch, jump etc. Then u have a config file that defines what keyframes are executed for what animations. so if ur run is from key 95 to 110 you set that and when u run it the engine loops that animation. How you actually animate is a matter of pratice.

Good luck:D

[dhin]

I have one small crit on them, the RED zombie needs the blood on its shirt made more noticable red on red no good. Browning the blood at the edges and darkening the blood red color will make it stand out more, and if you make the skirt a bit dirty that may help too. Nice models thought, I'd suggest Polycount as well.

[Solidarity]

Or it can be different and just not have blood on his shirt...
Don't have to think so violently. ;)