How To Add Custom Animations

[Broadside]

Custom Animation Tutorial

Written by. Broadside aka Bad Karma

I would like to thank the following people for thier help with me understanding parts of this.

Tannis-Her answers to animation questions and tutorial helped me understand the adding parts

GD13-For his package and help with answers to difficult questions.

Tee-His questions helped me find the answers.

Steel-For his help with the animation frame editing themselves

The monkey i taught to do this. - If i can get a monkey to do this you should be able to.


Recomended that you make back up files of all that you alter in your eagames/ultima file.




Step 1 Finding the animation you wish to convert to uo format. I provided the boar one that i am doing so you can follow along. Like they say best way to learn is hands on.

Step 2 You will need to find a program that seperates the type of animation you have. This one is in gif format and i use a program that came with Paint Shop Pro 8 called Animation Shop 3.

Step 3 You will need to find an animation to overwrite. Use Inside UO to find one. For this animation we will overwrite boar. Oddly its not in insideuo but its off on half of its stuff anyhow.

Step 4 You will need to get UOAnimationTool. Open that up and select 2d directory. Than find the boar animation than export as bmp into a new folder on your desktop. Title that Folder Replacing.

Step 5 Now you need to make a new folder on your desktop and title that boar. When you open up the boar.rar file (that i provided) you will see all animation types. Move them over to your file i had you name boar.

Step 6 Open the folder boar and delete the corpse animation. That is not needed for uo, it gets your corpse animation off the death animation.

Step 7 Make folders inside the boar folder for what animation type. Attack1, Attack2, Death, Neutral, Get Hit, and Walk.

Step 8 Now you need to open your animation program ( Animation Shop 3) and open up one of the animations. We will start with Walk. Note.. When saving animations there is no need to save any right facing animations. UO flips the left ones to make that direction so it would be a waste. When i do this i usually only do one attack animation it makes doing this easier.

Step 9 If using animation shop like i use. Click the first animation save frame as and be sure that the type is set to windows or os/2 bitmap and check the boxes long file names, save frame number in file name, and save total frame count in file name and click save. Than be sure your saving it in the corresponding folder this one being walk, and repeat the step but now the file format and boxes are already checked so all you have to do is click, save as, and save it will rename them so you will not have to. This will make getting all the frames out a lot easier. Follow that step will all animation types than go to step 10.

Step 10 Now that you have all the animations seperated into frames you will need to check the background. If its white grey or any other color than white you will have to dedit each background to white. Note..You will edit background to white yet boxes inside certain areas may still be grey you will have to zoom and color them white too so it don't look sloppy. Than just save and it will auto overwrite them. The reason for the white background is that white is transparent with animations in uo where if it was grey you will see that grey box around it if left grey and not be able to see the background behind the animation as it should be in uo. Once this step is completed with all frames in all the folders go to step 11.

Step 11 Now we need to put animations into block folders. Open the folder titled replacing and notice there are many fodles titled 27850-27914. You will need to make the same files in your boar folder. I will just copy paste all contents of that folder into the boar folder its a lot faster than creating that many and that way they are already numbered.

Step 12 If you did as i suggested and copy/pasted the animations for the old boar there will be the old frames in the folders, that is ok just leave them.

Step 13 Now open the first file 27850 and notice the animation is facing down. If you click through them fast you will find out its walk. Go to your walk folder for the boar animations and copy past the down animations for walk to that folder than go to the next it will be walk down left and keep doing this for every folder as you go down. Notice that there is fidget in the inside uo animations these animations should be in the same order as the files each one consisting of 5 directions. I use neutral for the fidgets even if there are more than one just copy them in both of them. I also take the lazy way and do just one attack animation and put it in each attack folder. When you complete moving animations into the folders go to step 14.

Step 14 Now we need to open the first folder 27850 again. Notice that the old animation only uses 6 frames and you have 17. You will need to pick through the animations clickin them to watch how it moves and delete some in betweens till your at the same amount as the old ones. Note they are named 0-5 making 6 animations. When done delete the old animations and rename the ones you kept in order 0-5. Follow this step with every folder and when completed go to step 15.

Step 15 Next you have to get a copy of uoanimation its not the same as uoanimationtool. Than open it up. Open your boar folder and make it tall and narrow and put it to the side so you can see the file numbers. You will need this to look at to help you on this step for this tool is EVIL it will not let you delete or go back if you make a mistake it is start all over and do it right.

Step 16 Ok now in you uoanimation program click add animation and for nevermind the name but for block number put the first file number 27850 then click ok. Then click add image and open up the file with your new animations 27850 and click on 0, than click add image again and click 1 keep doing that till you get all of them in that folder in order. 0-5. Note if you mess up close program and start over.

Step 17 Now do the same with next one click add animation and put in 27851. Than click add image again and do all of those animations. Follow these steps with every folder till yer done. I find it easier to say the numbers to myself so i do nto accidentally put 27851 twice or add the images of the file before by accident instead of opening the correct folder. Note that the reason i had you leave the long file on the right open is that there are sometimes skips in file number for instance sometimes they have 27851 to 27900 instead of 27852 but as you can tell this one doesn't. These numbers are very important, for uo has specific numbers for everything in the game and you can end up putting some of your animation on top of something else. When you get tthe last one done go to next step.

Step 18 When you are done click create patch and save to the Boar folder. This may take a little while to work just take a break until the program is done.

Step 19 Ok you finished all of the hard work. Now you need to get and open michealangelo. Click import and import the patch you just saved in your Boar folder. Than export as verdata back into the boar folder just title it verdata.

Step 20 Close insideuo if its still open.

Step 21 Now you need to get and open mulpatcher. At the top left you will see Anim.ids and Anim.mul. Click on the ... button next to spaces and open it all the way up to your eagame/ultima folder and you will see there is one file shown as that type d click it. When both are selected click load. Note..It will say it auto loads but you ahve to do this once for it to read them anyhow.

Step 22 Now go to the bottom right you will see tiny black arrow keys keep clickin it to the left till it stops moving than go over and click the anim tab. You will see on your left the body value numbers for animations. Go to the one for the old boar (not the pig compare with the script so you know you have the right body value for boar that your deleting) and click on the number and delete. Than click the black arrows at bottom of mulpatcher and go back to the settings tab. Go to the verdata tab and click the ... and go to you verdata file you saved in your boar folder and than click load.

Step 23 Next go back to the anim tab and go back to that number where you deleted the old boar image . It may already be there. It may show your animation there already. (Not sure if this step is needed but its the way i do it.) Click on the number if your animation is there and click save to file and save it in the boar folder. This one saves in vd format. Click the number again and select load from file and click the vd file ya just saved. than close mulpatcher.


THIS STEP IS AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT YOU NEED TO DO THE BOAR IS NOT IN THE DEF FILES SO NO NEED TO COMMENT
Step 24 Now you normally need to edit some files in your eagames/ultima folder. Like go to body.def and comment out 290 (old id) using // than save. This will comment out the animation its asking for that number so it will use your custom one. If this is not done you will not see your animation in game. Also comment out that same number 290 in body.conv , and corpse.def.

Step 25 Now you need to make a script for your animation(in this case its already made all you did was reaplace the image for a boar with another boar.) Add it to your custom folder in your RunUO folder and start the server.

Step 26 Now add a spawner and put the title of your new animation in it and spawn it. There ya go you got your animation.

Note .When you log on other shards you may see the animations you replace as your custom ones not actual.

Patching to players... Ok patching custom animations is huge you will have to copy paste your anim.idx, anim.mul, body.def, body.conv, and corpse.def. Than you will have to get and use the muo patching tool to put them in patch format. I think it will only patch the anim files not the body.def, body.conv, and corpse.def files. You will have to rar those. Than set them patches up and as you rplayers log in they will patch. It is a big big patch to do custom animations so be sure your players know this.

[Irian]

You don't have to replace anything. There are more than enough free slots for animations :-)

[Broadside]

All depends on how many animations you have available to you

[Tannis]

Thanks Broad! This was one aspect of "custom" that I really didn't understand. Tintamar is building us a website www.uoart.com. It's going to be all about adding custom art, etc. Would you mind if I posted this on there? Giving you the credit of course When it's up that is...I need to work on the forums sometime this week.

[Joeku]

Tannis you never replied to my PM

I wanted to know how to add stack-able art...

[Broadside]

Originally Posted by Tannis

Thanks Broad! This was one aspect of "custom" that I really didn't understand. Tintamar is building us a website www.uoart.com. It's going to be all about adding custom art, etc. Would you mind if I posted this on there? Giving you the credit of course When it's up that is...I need to work on the forums sometime this week.

Sure you can all i have is free to the public... I will keep an eye out for those forums too i seem to be a forum hound now its the only way ya learn.

[privatee]

Step 15 Next you have to get a copy of uoanimation its not the same as uoanimationtool. Than open it up. Open your boar folder and make it tall and narrow and put it to the side so you can see the file numbers. You will need this to look at to help you on this step for this tool is EVIL it will not let you delete or go back if you make a mistake it is start all over and do it right.

any clue where to get a copy of uoanimation? i have uoanimation tool but cant find uoanimation a link or anything would be fantastic! thanks!

[Broadside]

You should be able to get pretty much all you need from the following link.
http://uo-graphics.uo-francophone.ne....php?numcat=14

[privatee]

ok, i modded the daemon with sword anims. i enlarged them all and got them into the correct folders and placed the files into my UOG folder. the new ones show up in mul patcher, insideUO, but not ingame. they still show the old anims even though i deleted the old anims and replaced then with my new ones. the hex for daemon with sword is 0xA. also i tried to replace just the normal daemon (0x9) with the new animations because it seems that the daemon with sword is not shown in game whatsoever. and i get the same result, old daemon animation. i tried to comment the .def files and ended up the same still what am i missing here? Yes i made a script calling the correct body type. One more thing, all my other patches the anim.mul is abreviated to amm. when i try to abreviate the new one it cuases instant client crash so i left it at anim.mul.

[Broadside]

Originally Posted by privatee

ok, i modded the daemon with sword anims. i enlarged them all and got them into the correct folders and placed the files into my UOG folder. the new ones show up in mul patcher, insideUO, but not ingame. they still show the old anims even though i deleted the old anims and replaced then with my new ones. the hex for daemon with sword is 0xA. also i tried to replace just the normal daemon (0x9) with the new animations because it seems that the daemon with sword is not shown in game whatsoever. and i get the same result, old daemon animation. i tried to comment the .def files and ended up the same still what am i missing here? Yes i made a script calling the correct body type. One more thing, all my other patches the anim.mul is abreviated to amm. when i try to abreviate the new one it cuases instant client crash so i left it at anim.mul.

Did you try commenting out line 29 in body conv? it would look like the following after you do.

//10    7    -1    -1    -1

[privatee]

yes, i did. eventually i tried to comment any line that had 9 or 10 in it. what i did figure out is that if i take the new files and add them into the ultima online original files the customs show up, but if i put them into my test servers UOG folder(with or without directing the read file from) they do not show up. so for some reason the UOG folder is being overridden to the default ultima online files it seems. now, about the abbreviated file names in the UOG folder. is that just on my end or do you all have abbreviated name as well. if i dont abbreviate the files i can connect just fine(the new anims dont show up but i can connect), but if i abbreviate, as soon as i try to start up ultima on my test server the client insta crashes. if i place my old files back in( with the abbreviated names) i connect just fine abbreviated means tiledata.mul = td, anim.mul = amm, animidx = aim etc...

[Broadside]

The way i have it shown is in mulpatcher it will add the animations directly to your original uo files after you save. It sounds like your trying to make them into a patch file but they are not. You would have to turn them into a patch than set the patch up through gateway to get it properly. At least that is what i know of patching. I have not yet patched mine out to anyone so for the patching info you will have to check the forums for ways to do that.