I am looking for an animation of a unicorn....

Does somebody has one ?

Nope, I can't remember unicorns in any of the IE games out there, not even in the NWN series.

What T.G.M. said.

-Galactygon

You can always try to 3D Max a horse to look like a unicorn.

Poser might be a better utility for this. That or the Daz3D proggy which does the same but is free.

Yet, if you need attack/casting animations for the creature, you'll need to add those new frames by yourself too - I doubt the classical horse animation has them.

Has anyone ever looked at the Warlords series for extracting animations? There are some nice creatures in that, particularly the Unicorn.

I am thinking of Warlords III (or it could be IV): Reign of Heroes , I have both but can never remember which is which.

I think Reign of Heroes is the fourth, but since I don't own it, I could be wrong.

Age Of Wonders 2: Shadow Magic has a lot of creatures animations in the BG2 style fashion. I will try to catch and post a capture here.

In the game you can easily resize units animations as your wish (using the zoom), but I don't know which pc files control them.

The only problem about implementing the unicorn animation from other games (besides copyright, etc.), would be that the animations would seem out of place with the rest of the animations found in the IE games.

The same applies with the NWN animations, but not as much as animations from other games.

-Galactygon

AOW2:SM mod makers incorporate animations from others games as well, like Age Of Empires and the like.

But I understand your fears, thought. Let me post another SM typical unit in the BG2 fashion:

Basilisk:

And check this...
http://aow.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/...&f=33,3988,0,60

Do you like this:

http://www.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=2122

http://www.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=2157

http://www.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=2121

They sit in my Poser's runtime, but I've never tried to animate them though it's very possible.

Yes, they would look good in BGII. I would be willing to incorporate those into the mod if you could make them work in the game.

-Galactygon

Okay Galc, I'll try to make them animated, but then you'll need to convert them from GIF to BAM sequences, but you know all this better than me.

Of all the things I couldn't do, that is one of the last things I will make attempts in; all of them ended in miserable failures so far. You could try and get someone else to do that part for you who is more proficient in .gif -> .bam conversion or try to do it yourself.

-Galactygon

Galactygon, did with your gif conversions did the colors get messed up? or what was it that did not go right?

Yes, it was the colours, and the picture was speckled. I tried to do it BAM Workshops 1 and 2, but with little success.

-Galactygon

meh same here I tried to use dltcep too but it did not like gif. or did not like what I was doing with it
I did have some success at importing the first secquence but any after that was junk. I could however import the frames by themselves. but that just adds 10 times the work.
maybe Avenger can straighten that out if he see this.

That would be welcome, since Vlad could finish the sequences easily, and I don't have to worry about it.

-Galactygon

I am working on something right now. Porting some WoW animations into IE format. Here is an example.
As unicorns will feature in ROTM, I'm sure I will make the bams. If someone is interested...

Wow!

EDIT: Yes, YES! It was a wordgame, now laugh, dammit!!

It's a problem base on the color palette used for Bamworkshop (and gif format also).
If you try to import a gif in a existing Bam with its proper color palette, the gif will (of course) use the palette.
If you try to create a bam from scrap and then import your Gif, the newly created bam will use an horrible 256-primary color

I can remember how I dealt with that: first create your bam, and import whatever pic' you want.
Open your gif file with a tool like Paint Shop Pro and save the palette.
Then, open your Bam with Bamworkshop 2. Import the palette.

Now the right palette is part of your bam: you can import your gif with Bamworkshop I, and there should be no problem.

That unicorn is taken from a perspective point of view; it will look significantly out of place in the isometric point of view BGII uses.

-Galactygon

One problem with WoW, is that Blizz.rd is a very bitchy company.
They might sue you even if they just see this pic
So, take care, if you are cursed with having to share a country with them.

I'm assuming that you're using 3DSMax 4? If not, what plugin/package did you use?

Did anyone ever get a functional or semi-functional unicorn animation? This would make a great druidic spell addition (Call Woodland Beings has a chance to summon a unicorn per PnP). I can try to do a BAM conversion is someone has GIFs or the like.

heh... I asked Avenger about DLTCEP last month... and didnt get a straight answer. There is a need to be able to import entire sequences via GIF.

Unicorns would be cool. Are there any other gifs of that unicorn posted above? More angles and positions. I can make the animation if I have them

Cuv

Yeah, there sure is. You'd think between DLTCEP, BAM Workshop and the TeamBG plug-in, one of those tools would have that. I'd do it myself if I knew enough about it. Hmm, maybe I could script it in PSP/PS or something.
There are, but I don't know if there are any that will fit IE well, besides a maybe a white horse animation with a horn added. And it'd probably need other sequences for attacking etc. I was thinking maybe your sohmien import from PST could be modded. Only it's got 6 horns instead of 1, and the head is kind of misshaped.

assuming that you have an animation and it works in the game, what do you do with it?
if you ride it can you script a 'travel time' change? since I would think that they are fast.
use it as a pack animal by putting saddle bags on it.
if neither it is a lot of work to get this thing in the game for something you might see once or twice from bg1 to tob.

w00t! 1900 posts

Well, as I said above, I'm looking for the unicorn as an addition to the PnP Call Woodland Beings spell. And yeah, the whole horse-riding/pack-animal thing has been bandied about a bit too. As long as we have the right animation sequences, adding or subtracting a horn would be child's play, as tedious as it might be... even I could do that.

Apart from that, there are more than enough forest areas to disburse a few unicorns within. And so what if you'd only see them a few times between BG1 and BG2? People have created scores of half-finished areas which will probably never be seen, unless they come back from out of the woodworks and finish their mods. And even if they did, you'd only see a given area once, maybe twice per game probably. I'm just talking about one animation here though, that could be used several times.

I really wish there was a 3D modeling tool in which you could create creature animations and export them to BG-compatible BAMs. Or at least BG-compatible BMP/GIF sequences, whatever, rather than doing every single frame by hand, one at a time .

well 3ds can model, texture, cast shadow, animate, and save all files in bmp (256 color if wanted)

but you will have to do all that work for something imo that is virtually unusable.
you could put in 100's of unicorns but they are supposed to be rare. so seeing one is a once in a lifetime experience, twice is very unlikely. so if you could capture it when you see it, then actually have some benefit to doing so, like the aforementioned. then there is a valid reason to do all that work other than just seeing it.

as far as areas are concerned, well, you have to have them since everything is built on them.
there are a lot of things I would like IE to do but it just doesn't (animations being something it does not do well)

Was not the one animation in Diablo or Diablo 2