Standalone animation

Let us start with the easiest animation - a very simple gesturing animation.

Firstly we have to have the animation source files ready. Best way to decompile them is using Gothic Sourcer. In GothicSourcer you choose Tools > Decompiler models > Dynamic (MDS or MSB) and choose an MDS file of your choice - Humans.mds in our case and then click the decompile button.

Animating

Open Blender, File > Import > Shoun's ASCII Model Importer (.asc), navigate to the folder with your decompiled animation files and select HUM_BODY_NAKED0.ASC. This file contains the skeleton and skin model for human NPCs.

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Model ("HuS")
{
    meshAndTree ("Hum_Body_Naked0.ASC" DONT_USE_MESH)

A windows pops up and you can read some interesting information about the model you are about to import. We are interested in the fact that Completely replace current scene is ticked, we want to use Armature modifier, and we also want to Try to connect bones and Use sample meshes from folder. You should provide a path to a directory with the sample meshes - these are meshes for items, that usually go into slot bones. Lastly, the space transformation scale should be set to 0.01. This is because ZenGin works with centimeter units and one unit in Blender is a meter.

Click import and wait for the magic to happen.

This video shows a freshly imported model with all default meshes.

Gothic characters are modular and you can change their heads on the fly, even during gameplay as seen in this amazing video from my dear friend and colleague Fawkes - Head changing. Let's add a head so that we can see how the whole body will behave while we are animating. File > Import > Shoun's ASCII Model Importer (.asc), navigate to your head model. You will have to decompile it like we did with the body itself. We will import HUM_HEAD_PONY.ASC. Please make sure to select the target bone for importing Bip01 Head, this will attach the head to the proper bone, just like the engine does it.

Now we have everything ready to start animating. The video shows the DopeSheet a nice way to edit keyframes.

We can import an animation into Blender as a base.

In this video we can see that the idle standing animation is s_run. We want to make an animation that is going to start from this idle animation, so we will import it into blender. We find it by looking into the .mds file, look for s_run name and get the name of the file.

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ani    ("s_Run" 1 "s_Run" 0.1 0.1 MI "Hum_RunAmbient_M01.asc" F 1 50)  

Next goes the first trick. Since we want our animation to end exactly, as it started - ether because we want the hero to continue his standing animation, or we want to make a looping animation, we somehow have to copy the pose. We use the DopeSheet screen, to delete all keyframes and then copy the keyframe set from keyframe number 0 and drag it somewhere to the end of the timeline.

Once the animation is done, we have to export it into an asc format again, File > Export > Kerrax ASCII model (.asc) and then save it to _work\data\Anims\asc\ so the engine can see it and convert it.
There are many options here that we will explore later, but we have tick Export animation and pick bones that we want to export - this is useful for animations that are played on different layers (dialogue gestures, scratching head, scratching a shoulder,...).

Animation script

Now that we have exported the animation, we now have to define it in Humans.mds.

Open the file, scroll to the end and define a new animation.

Example:

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ani ("t_backpain" 1 "" 0.0 0.0 M. "Hum_back.ASC" F 0 121)  

Save the Humans.mds file and try it in game. Nothing happens! The reason is that the mds has been already compiled, and we have to recompile it. The easiest is to go to Anims\_compiled and delete HUMANS.MSB.
Run the game and try to play the animation again (play ani t_backpain in MARVIN console) and now everything should work.

Amazing, now you have your first animation in the game. And you can use it to do some fun stuff, like in dialogues using the AI_PlayAni function.

Example dialogue

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instance DIA_Xardas_Back (C_INFO)
{
    npc         = NONE_100_Xardas;
    nr          = 11;
    condition   = DIA_Xardas_Back_Condition;
    information = DIA_Xardas_Back_Info;
    permanent   = TRUE;
    description = "What's wrong?";
};

func int DIA_Xardas_Back_Condition () {
    return TRUE;
};

func void DIA_Xardas_Back_Info () {
    AI_Output (self, hero, "DIA_Xardas_MOB_14_00"); // My back hurts so much.

    // This is our animation!!!!!
    AI_PlayAni(self, "T_BACKPAIN"); 
    AI_Output (self, hero, "DIA_Xardas_MOB_14_01"); // How do YOU feel?

    AI_Output (hero, self, "DIA_Xardas_MOB_14_02"); // My back is fine.
    AI_StopProcessInfos(self);
};