Animation Utilities: Version 1.1

[KnightErrant]

I've finished up the beta version 1.1 of animationutilities and have uploaded
it here:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/downloads.php?do=file&id=1469

The zip file name is animationutilties_v1_1.zip. It contains six files:

animationlibrary.py
animationutilities.py
ChrysophylaxDives.gif
meshconverterv1_0_4.py
armored_sergeants_tail_reordered.skeleton
UsersGuideAndTutorial.pdf

The first three are the actual animation utilities. The meshconverterv1_0_4.py is
an update to version 1_0_3 to be able to handle units with extra bones.
The skeleton file is simply included as an example of the .skeleton format
used to export new skeletons with changed bone sizes, like for dwarves, or
skeletons with extra bones, like armored_sergeants with two extra tail bones.
The User's Guide and Tutorial covers the use of the nine utilities.
The tutorial part goes through the procedure for getting a non-standard skeleton
unit in game, that is, making a new animation family from an existing one by
exporting a new skeleton to all the .cas files in a copied directory.

All of these utilities assume you are running with Caliban's animations directory
since these are the files that they manipulate. I won't go into details of each
of the utilities since that's what the User's Guide is for but here's a brief
overview.

Double-clicking on animationutilities.py will bring up a dialog box that looks
like this:



There are nine utilities, one can get a brief help by clicking on the little
"Info" button beside each one. animmerge and animextract are used to merge an animation .cas file with a converted .ms3d file and to extract a
modified animation back out to a .cas file. Extractskeleton pulls a modified
skeleton out of a .ms3d file for use in exporting to a family of animations.
(Think dwarf unit here.) Exportskeleton exports the modified skeleton to a
family of animations. Reorderbones will move weapon/shield bones after any
new bones that have been added to a model; necessary to get the animations to play in-game. Exportextrabonesskeleton does the exporting
of skeletons with extra bones. convertcastotxt will read a selected .cas
file and convert it to a readable ASCII decimal for. converttxttocas goes
the other way and turns a .txt file back into a binary .cas file. This was
useful for making flying dwarves and seeing how they interacted with regular
units in only a few minutes. Finally, there is a survecasdirectory utility that
is of use to researchers in this area.

Please read the User's Guide and Tutorial for more information. Hate to
post and run, but I'll be out of town starting June 20 through June 30 so
please post any comments and especially bug reports here and I'll sort
through them when I get back.

As always, the release is free of conditions, feel free to modify and use
as you see fit.