Does anyone have any experience of the 3dsMax animations that can be used in VC mapping via the MANM file type? I have applied various script animations which is fine for basics but I'm interested in what's possible with the MANM format.
The SDK scripting manual mentions the format a number of times and even says... Sample script with the MANM animation can be found here
But that just points to a section that lists the dynamic object scripts included int he SDK.
I believe Jimmy once mentioned the format briefly on this forum somewhere but I don't think there was any further info in that post.
If anyone has any ideas where I could find further info or anyone I could speak to about it, pelase link me up!
Hi, from my effort of documenting all vietcong file formats (note that I know that I will not do it for all file formats, but maybe someone will use this knowledge or continue my work in the future). I created a page also for MANM file format, see here on github.
As you can see, it is pretty simple.
I have never created a map or 3D model in 3DS Max, but I will try to tell all I know about this format. The MANM file contains several blocks. I think the MANM and BES are both used for animation in pair, because each block has hard-coded mesh name which will be animated. So BES is used for model and MANM for information how to animate that model. Which model will be used for your animation is defined by the script I guess, but I may be wrong. I think that you are animating each part of 3D model (in BES, you can give names to parts, the meshes, of the model, right?) separately since in each block of your MANM you put one name from BES.
So for each block we know which part of BES we are animating. Now we need to define how to animate it. For this there are other information in each block- the operations like translations and rotations. For each of this operation you can define time when this operation starts. And for whole block you can set total duration of all animations.
For example, file G/WEAPONS/VVH_PPS-41/FPV/CHANGE_MODE_DOWN_PPS41.MANM from vietcong_cz_01.cbf (I believe there is similar file for other versions of VC). It is animation for changing the mode on PPS41 gun (only the animation of weapon, no model itself and no hand/body animation). This file is only 141 bytes big and contains only one block - for part "pojistka" ("safety" ) of some BES object (which BES object is not defined here, it has to be defined maybe by script...or file locations? I dont know).This block consists of 2 translations (movement of object, one starts at time 7, second at time 10) and one rotation (starts at time 10) of this part (there is also one unknown operation, I have to investigate more). Thats it, by these few operations VC animates the change mode of PPS41.
I could show you binary data and explain what does it really contains, but my tool I am using is not working now.
Thats it what I found so far about this file format. It will probably not help you, and sometimes I am only guessing (as I said, I never made a map, all info I got is from reverse-engineering these files).
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