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I badly need to animate my models to be used in DBC
I know that DBC doesnt support bone animation and was wondering if anyone would be kind enough to explain how to make animations for DBC?
What programs support frame animation?

And after i have an animated model.. how do i get them to animate in game? I know how to make the character be animated but not the AI..

All help is greatly apriciated!

In a pinch, you can create your own simple animations in DBC using the ROTATE LIMB, SAVE ANIMATION, and APPEND ANIMATION commands.

You'll need to spend some time with the example that's referenced in the help for the APPEND ANIMATION command, but it's a good and simple example. They start with a simple character, rotate a limb so that he waves his arm, and then save that animation to a file that they load back in and play.

You'll have to spend some time with the DBC example program though and decide if it will work for you. I used it as the basis of a program to animate a tank turret and it came out quite well. The tank only had 3 limbs -- the body, the turret, and the barrel. I XROTATE'd the turret limb, set a keyframe, rotated it some more, set another keyframe, etc. You don't have to do tons of rotations in small increments - often a starting and ending location are enough. DirectX interpolates (fills in) the other positions for you.

Again, it requires a little tinkering but it may work for you. Best of luck...

Thanks ill try that.
Quick question tho.. Are the limbs of a model seperate from the model or is it all one model and i just move diffrent portions of it? wouldnt be good if i needed to disconnect the arms and legs from my models..

The reading I've done, which applies to DirectX 8 and back, often refers to a root limb of the object to which the position and orientation of the other limbs are relative. When I move the object all the limbs move along in lock step.

When I rotate a limb, it changes its orientation and (so far) all the limbs attached to it are moving as I would expect -- like, when I rotate the upper thigh limb of a human model, the lower leg and foot MOVE along with it, so it does look like walking. I don't have to disconnect anything from the model, and I don't have to worry about making separate adjustments to the parts attached to the limb I'm rotating -- they seem to follow along just fine.

I've had a few very funny accidents by rotating a limb along the wrong axis though -- it looks disconnected from the model when you do that, but it seems to still move along with the model.

I think (but am not sure) that you have to UNGLUE a limb to actually disconnect it. I used one of the aircraft carrier models in the DBC release along with a free airplane I downloaded from 3DCafe, and glues the airplane to the deck of the carrier as a limb. I could still rotate the airplane "into the wind" as the carrier moved, but it rotated with the carrier also. To "take off", I had to unglue the airplane.

Hope some of that makes sense.