[Deji]

I will not go into specific details of how to use 3ds MAX... That you have to figure out yourself because it'd make the tutorial too long and it's pretty easy to figure out how to use anyway...


You Will Need:

• GTA San Andreas or Vice City (ANY VERSION!)
• An average PC (Mine runs perfectly with 256MB Video card and 512MB RAM)
• 3ds MAX (9 Perferably)
• Gmax (Yes, it works in Gmax but this tutorial is based on 3ds Max. Hopefully you already know how to use Gmax)
• Kams DFF Script (You must have 3ds MAX!)
• Kams IFP Script (Install after installing the DFF one)
• Patience (Making animation can be annoying and tedious. You need to be able to spend as long as you can making the animations...)
• Some animation making knowledge (You will need to know about frames and moving things around in 3D animation)

And most importantly common sense! If you aren't too good at animating in 3D then I suggest you download 'Endorphin' and practise the first two tutorials on the website. Endorphin is a fun tool but it is MUCH more complicated then 3ds MAX. The reason you practise on this is cause it has a nice video tutorial and gets you used to moving your characters bones around.

Or you can just download 3ds MAX and fiddle...

This tutorial is designed for San Andreas so if you have Vice City it may be confusing. Hopefully you can figure out what the VC versions of things are.


So, on with the tutorial. Hopefully by now you have everything installed and it's all ready... Before we start using the program we need to get a few files from GTA to mod. Because I like you especially for signing up to this site, I will even go through making the appropriate backups...

First locate your GTA installation folder and click the 'Anim' folder. Inside you will see ped.ifp and anim.IMG...

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Sub Tutorial time! If you already know this you can skip...

An .ifp file contains animation files. Inside ped.ifp there are more .ifp files containing the actual animations. ped.ifp is the General animations. Don't be confused into thinking that they are only for peds!

An .img file is like a .zip file except for San Andreas. Although it can't be opened with winzip or winrar. The best program for opening these files is: IMG Tool 2.0 - If you open this particular .img file it'll contain more .ifp animation files!
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Now copy these files and paste them in a backups folder. Then it's best to make another folder full of files to mod. Paste the files into that too and your done.


You will now need to get the player.dff bone structure. We use this one because it is the basic one. It'll work on carl perfectly and it'll work almost as well on other people. Go to your GTA directory and enter the 'Models' folder. Open gta3.img with IMG Tool 2.0. Click Edit > Find and type player.dff and tap enter. Right click the highlighted bit and click extract and choose a memorable place to put a copy of the player.dff file.

Now that you have your players bones and most of the animations we can open 3ds Max! It may take a while to load but be patient!

When it loads we first need to properly install Kams scripts into 3ds MAX...

Click MAXScrip > Run Script... Go to where you extracted Kams scripts and click 'GTA_IFP_IO.ms' - And done! We no longer need to do this as it will load on the Right side upon start. Just click 'IFP IO' under 'IFP Dump'


Now the hard part is done! Time for the more fun part...


After opening Kams script you have a new window open... Click 'Import DFF' on it and find your 'player.dff' that you extracted... Next click 'Load IFP' and locate your ped.ifp file that you copied.

Now you will see a yellow dot like thing in the Perspective view on the screen. As well as a long list of animation files on Kams IFP script window.

Let's get rid of the top, side and bottom views. We really don't need them that much. Press the button in the very bottom-right hand corner of the program. The perspective view will now be much bigger and easier to work with. Scroll up to zoom up to what looked like a dot. Yes! It's a body!

Now click and drag over the body to select all of his bones so that we aren't just applying an animation on a few of them... The bones will turn white if selected.

In the Kams IFP IO Script box where you see abseil, scroll down to WEAPON_crouch and click 'Apply Animation'. You will now see the guy crouching. If you click play in the bottom corner you will see the animation play. He will breath in and out as he is crouched.

We are going to edit this animation to do something simple... Why? Because this is just practise and this animation is easy to activate...

IF you wanted to select another animation after activating one you have to select all of the guy and click 'R' in the window. You can then choose another animation to apply.

There is no easy way to tell you what to do now... You can select a section of the character and choose between the move or rotate tool to move the body parts to your will.

I made a simple difference of putting the guys hand in the air...

There are keyframe options at the bottom of the program to do each part of the animation. As I said, it'll take too long to go into these and this part is pretty easy to work out. There are also some tutorials in 3ds Max. Not for editing SA but it'll teach you how to move the guy more...

After you've finished you select all of the character, choose which animation to overwrite (WEAPON_crouch) and click 'Replace' - It'll load for about half a second and then your done!

That's it! The file you imported has been edited with the new animation. Copy the ped.ifp file you edited to your SA/Anims folder and overwrite the exsisting. Load San Andreas and crouch.... Whalla! Your animation should be there!

Now replace with your backup. You don't really want a test animation in SA all the time do you?

To edit even more .ifp files, open that anim.img i talked about and extract one of the animation classes somewhere. Then open that in 3ds MAX.

One final thing... The things inside the cuts.img folder are for cutscenes. Don't bother messing with them!

[Ashwin]

nice tutorial ,
thanks for it.
but i have some problem with 3ds max.
when i run it. it don't says any thing & close
is .net framework is needed ?
my system info..
2 GB of ram
500 gb SATA hardisk
DUEL CORE processor 2.0 Ghz
NVIDIA graphic card

what i do not have for it to run
pls help,,

This post has been edited by Ashwani: Feb 13 2011, 04:16 AM

[Deji]

You'd be better off asking someone who knows more about the program, like on a 3Ds MAX forum or something. I have no idea how to use it, really.

[ceedj]

There is no easy way to tell you what to do now... You can select a section of the character and choose between the move or rotate tool to move the body parts to your will.

Never, ever, EVER use move or scale on bones. You can use move on the root bone, but nowhere else. This will introduce bugs into the animation. ALWAYS use rotation.

This post has been edited by ceedj: Jun 16 2011, 08:35 PM

[Deji]

Wish I'd had known that when I used to attempt animating