Whilst making custom playable characters, I'm faced with the hassle of battle animations. The animations themselves, in this case at least, are not the problem (I'm harvesting them in entirety from other models). The problem is that if I replace an existing playable character's battle model with a custom model that has unique bones, parts, and animations, the original character's animation index (for lack of a better term) still says, "When Steal is initiated, play animation 4B".
A simple, if crude, workaround for this is to identify every animation for the original model, identify every animation for the custom model, then swap the correct animations, leaving the total number of animations intact since the original model, and using a null value (30 1A 00 00) for everything that won't be used.
This works to an extent, but when the original character performs several animations for a particular action and the custom character will only perform one (or less than the original, in any case), I'm forced to jam several animations together and try to still make it look fluid and natural. Moreover, if I intend to use the same animation for more than one action (and the original character didn't also use only one animation for these exact actions), I must duplicate it entirely within the model, wasting space and cluttering the file needlessly.
I've no clue where this data is stored (KERNEL.BIN?), but does anyone have a clue as to where each action of each playable character is assigned an animation number?
On the playstation the animation data is included with the model. ALSO the weapon is a bone in the character model.
It should be very similiar in the PC data (perhaps located differently). The index of each animation that the character has is the same and the same number of animations. Break limits I think were handled seperately.
There are several sub files on the playstation first came the bone structure data then the vertices and polygons. The next came the animation data. Although most was very short (the index list is at the begining of the file ).
Anyhow anything past the TIM image was the weapon model bones (which had no textures in them). The animations where between the HRC data bones and model data.
The format was outlined a while ago which I probably have a copy of somewhere (heh).
Looks like the data in the wiki is somewhat incomplete (as in not much has been updated it since I added too it).
anyhow the animations for the
PC are outlined here the PS1 is fairly similiar but the packaging is the trick. Your biggest challenge will be associating the correct animation with the correct file section.
Also compressing the animation data will be a bit interesting. The data I believe is identical between PC and PS1 (
raw data). The PS1 battle model stuff looks to need a
bit of clean up in the wiki but it's mostly their.
As I said the hard part is knowing which section is what animation. I believe the movement animations are just cycled and the attack animation is just fired for the weapon if it's a hand weapon, otherwise if it's a distance weapon (Yuffie Barret Vincent) I think their is just an attack animation that's fired.
Anyhow ... I digress what was I babbling about?
Cyb