Note Track Tutorial: Waving Peon

Note Track Tutorial: Waving Peon
Written for version .70 This tutorial will explain how to make a simple modification to an existing animation using the Note Track program.
Disclaimer: The program is not done, full of bugs, and largely defective. Don't even try.
MDL(s) needed: Peon (Units\Orc\Peon\Peon.MDX)

Duplicating the Stand animation: Instead of making the waving animation completely from scratch, it is simpler and more effective to base it off an existing animation. Stand is the most suitable. The animation transfer program can be used to duplicate it.
- Open the animation transfer program.
- Change the base file to the Peon you extracted.
- Change the animation file to the Peon you extracted. (It's the same because we're just getting the animation from itself.)
- Name the output file something like PeonWave.mdl .
- Check 'Transfer single animation'. That single animation will be the one we duplicate.
- Change 'Animation to transfer' to "Stand" (no quotes).
- Change 'Get visiblity from' to "Stand" as well.
- Click 'Transfer' and the animation will be duplicated.
Before we can make sense of what we find in the note track, we need to know where the new animation starts and stops.
- Open the new MDL in Notepad.
- Scroll down to the bottom of the 'Sequences' section. You'll see something like this:
```
...
		MinimumExtent { -2.23555, -34.0237, 2.95907 },
		MaximumExtent { 80.3052, 37.8751, 12.7472 },
		BoundsRadius 47.3389,
	}
	Anim "Stand" {
		Interval { 163600, 166933},
		MinimumExtent { -17.3174, -33.5146, -1.66715 },
		MaximumExtent { 50.3449, 34.2799, 87.607 },
		BoundsRadius 56.683,
	}
}
```
- That bolded line that starts with 'Interval' says when the animation starts and stops, in frames. Write that down or remember it (or just check back here).
- While you have the MDL open in Notepad already, you can change the new animation's name from 'Stand' if you want.
Introduction to the note track
- Open the note track. Here is a picture of what you'll see and what it means. Components will be explained later.
- Go to File->Open and select PeonWave.mdl .
- Change the bone selector dropdown, in the upper left, to Bone_Arm1_L, which is the Peon's right shoulder. That is the one we will be making wave.
- Change the transformation type dropdown, to the right of the bone selector, to 'Rotation'. This will be it so the right shoulder's rotation is displayed as opposed to its movement.
- Click the '-' a dozen or so time to zoom out. Click the '>' to scroll over to the right. Scroll until you reach the end of the graph, where our new animation must be. Zoom back in some.
- Wave your mouse around in that area and you'll see the frame display, in the lower left, change. You'll see that the last frame is 163600, the start of our animation. So, we must make our animation starting there.
Making the animation: Bum bum de dumm!
- Click 'Add @ Frame'. This will bring up a dialog box asking at which point you want to add an animation key. You want to add one at the end of the animation, so type or paste 166933.
- You'll see the line extend to a new frame. Zoom and pan so the view roughly fits around these two frames.
- Now comes the (somewhat) fun part: actually animating. The idea is to make the X (red) value increase (arm moves up), decrease (arm moves down slightly, preparing for second wave), increase (second wave) and decrease (move back down to where it was before the wave). Here's how that would look:
- Adding the initial 'up' frame is a good place to start. Left click once about one third of the way between the two frames you have the view centered one. Click 'Add @ Sel' and you'll see a new frame appear where you clicked.
- Now, it had to be modified to actually make the arm go up. Click the 'X' button (not the one that closes it) if it isn't already white (activated).
- Right click and drag upwards. You'll see the red line move to a higher-up location.
- If you save and convert to MDX now, you'll see the peon's arm go up, then down during the new animation.
- Add another frame slightly after the one you just did using a similar method (click where you want it, click 'Add @ Sel', adjust as needed). This one should go down some.
- Add a third new one further along still. Make it go back up some. Your red line should now look somewhat like mine in the above picture.
- To make this look a little more natural, it would be a good idea to animation the elbow as well. Use the bone dropdown to switch to the elbow (Bone_Arm2_L). Add the ending frame using 'Add @ Frame' and then the other frames like you did before. I made my curve like this:
That should be enough to make him wave somewhat realistically. You can always go back and modify what you've done by left clicking and dragging to select and right clicking and dragging to move. You may have noticed that your file size is somewhat smaller and the animation quality is somewhat worse. This is because the program only saves linear animations at this point, as opposed to the curving ones that most models use.