[Tutorial] vertex weight animation using MS3D

[zombekillz]

i have heard people in the past say that you can't vertex animate in milkshape, turns out you can, so i decided to make a little tutorial/.gif showing you how its done.
vertex animation can be a nice addition to playertypes, weapons like the bow item, and vehicles, it is what allows game characters in other games to have knees and elbows that bend smoothly.
here is a gif that will probably take entirely too long to load for you:


select the highlighted check-boxes to get your weights to show up in color


here is a recap of what I did:

1. make a joint you want to use to manipulate the vertices. (the red circle thing)
2. select the vertices you want to manipulate, unlike regular animations by group, the joint doesn't need to be selected at the same time.
3. go to the joints tab on the upper-right corner of milkshape.
4. highlight the joint you made in step one on the list of joints (Don't select it)
5. use the first drop down menu above the green/yellow/red weight slider to select your joint.
6. slide the weight slider to 100% (or less, depending on how much weight you want to place on the selected vertices)
7. click the assign button to finish weighting your vertices
8. animate and export just as you would normally, and your finished!

any questions/ suggestions would be appreciated!

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[Gumba Jonny]

This should be stickied.

[Str4tofortress]

I've done vertex animations before but I never had to set the weights. What does that do for it?

[TheKhoz]

I've done vertex animations before but I never had to set the weights. What does that do for it?

Well, for character models it allows for organic looking movements. This is so you get a natural "skin" look on human characters instead of just having the triangles go into each other unnaturally. It's sort of hard to explain, I suggest you look up vertex weighting in general, not just in regards to MS3D or Blockland

So unless you want to make a player model like the [Army Men](http://forum.blockland.us/index.php?topic=66450.0), it's not going to have too much use for Blockland in general

[zombekillz]

I've done vertex animations before but I never had to set the weights. What does that do for it?

i have found since making this tutorial that you don't really need to set the weights because when you assign the vertex to a joint the weight is automatically 100%, but if you assign a smaller percentage to the vertex then it will move less, for example, if you have a vertex weighted at 100% and one at 50% and you move the joint 2 units, the vertex weighted with 100% will move 2 units and the vertex weighted at 50% will move only one unit away from its starting position.  its best to play around with the weights for yourself, as they are kinda hard to explain, just move that slider around until you notice a pattern/change.