Animation
2) Basic Animation With MilkShape

While this won't be a complete guide to animation using MilkShape, it should serve as a starting point for those of you new to the program.

So what is animation? The dictionary defines it as: "the making of movies by filming a sequence of slightly varying drawings or models so that they appear to move and change when the sequence is shown". And for our purpose, its close enough. We're going to make a model, move that model around, and record those movements for playback.

Let's start by making the model. Nothing fancy, just a ball. Click on the "Sphere" button under the "Models Tab". Left click on the grid and pull to create the sphere.

Ick. A bit plain. Let's add a material. You can add your own at this point or you can use this one:

Now that's much better.

There, the models done. Now we need to give it the ability to move around. Under the "Model Tab" click on the button that says "Joint". Click on your newly created ball somewhere to place the joint.
Now click on the "Move" button and center that joint on your ball. (If you can't see the joint, look in the "Joint Tab" and make sure that "Show Skeleton" has been checked)

If I haven't completely confused you, your model should look like this:

If you click on the "Joint Tab" you should see the joint listed:

To prove thats our joint, let's rename it. While still on the "Joint Tab", you should see a text box to the right of the "Rename" button. Highlight the text that's currently in there, then type in ball. Now click on the "Rename" button.

Great! Time to animate right? Well, no. Animation is the process of moving joints around and recording that movement. At this point, MilkShape views the joint and the ball as 2 separate things. We need to connect them together. While still on the "Joint Tab" select your newly created joint (called ball). Now hold down Ctrl+A to select everything (in this case your sphere). Now click the Assign button under the "Joint Tab". There, now you've associated that joint, called ball, with the sphere/ball. Whenever we move the joint while animating, the ball will move with it.

Let's Animate! We've created a model, assigned a joint to it, now it's time to make it move. To begin with, click on the "Window Menu" and make sure that the "Show Keyframer" is checked. If so, you should see the animation bar (keyframer) at the bottom of MilkShape.

In the lower right hand corner of the "keyframer" is the "Anim" button. Click on that to activate "animation mode". When you activate the "animation mode", the 2 text boxes next to the "Anim" button become active. The first box (which should read 1.0) shows that you are currently on the first frame of animation. The second box (which defaults to 30) gives the total number of frames in this particular animation.

As we said earlier, animation is the process of moving joints and recording that movement. Each step/frame of recorded movement is called a "keyframe". In this particular animation we want the first frame of the animation to be exactly what it is now. A ball sitting on a flat surface about to bounce. Hold down Ctrl+A to select everything. Under the "Animate" menu click "Set Keyframe" (alternatively Ctrl+K). Not very exciting since the ball just sits there! Let's add some movement. Slide the "keyframer" bar (also called a scrub bar) to the right 3 places.

You should notice that the first text box has now changed to 4 indicating that you are now on the 4th frame, out of 30, of this particular animation. With everything selected (Ctrl+A), click on the "Move" button under the "Models Tab" and slide your model up one grid space.

Now click on the "Animate" menu and select "Set Keyframe" (alternatively Ctrl+K). Why did we go to frame 4 instead of 2? You could have. However, MilkShape's intuitive animation mode allows you to move the model to its final resting place and it will fill in the necessary movement to get from frame 1 to frame 4. This works well if the movement is fairly linear, straight line. But if your movement is more complicated you may have to "hand animate" each frame (1-4) to get exact movement.

Let's do that again. Move the scrub bar (keyframe slider) to the right another 3 places. Now move your model up another grid space. Click on the "Animate" menu and select "Set Keyframe" (alternative Ctrl+K). You should be on frame 7.

Now we've got the ball bouncing upwards. But what goes up, must come down. Let's move the scrub bar (keyframe slider) another 3 places to the right. Move your model "down" a grid space. Click on the "Animate" menu and select "Set Keyframe" (alternative Ctrl+K). You should now be on frame 10.

Almost done. Move the scrub bar (keyframe slider) to the right another 3 places. Now move your model down another grid space. You should be back to your original starting position. Click on the "Animate" menu and select "Set Keyframe" (alternative Ctrl+K). You should be on frame 13.

There you go. A simple animation of a ball bouncing. Let's take a look at it. Click on the 3D window of MilkShape (to make it the active window). Now click the "play" button on the "Keyframer".

You may notice that your model stops momentarily before it bounces again. Why? Remember the second text box which shows 30 frames total? Let's change that. The reason the model stops momentarily is because it's playing all 30 frames of animation. We just need 13. Hit the "play" button again to stop the animation. Highlight the 30 and change it to 13. Now hit the "play" button and see how it looks.

There. If I've done my job right, you should have a brand new bouncing baby...ball.

This is by no means a complete tutorial on animation. There are many other factors that must be considered depending on what the animation is for. My goal here was to give you something you could try to get a feel for the interface, and some useful information about animating with MilkShape. I hope you found this tutorial helpful. Please feel free to email me with your thoughts or comments.