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This guide will show you how to replace (or add to) the animations for the zombies in your map (such as idle, sprinting, and traverse animations)
PREREQUISITES
Before starting, make sure you've imported the anims you want to use into APE.
RADIANT
Firstly, open up your map in Radiant and locate your AI spawner/actor. This usually looks like a headless zombie in an a-pose:
Select it, bring up the entity info panel (N on keyboard), and check the name at the top.
If its name is zm_factory_zombie, click "remap class" and select "zm_usermap_zombie".
If you're using a custom zombie type (like Erthrock's Buried Zombies), go to APE and check which Animation State Machine and Animation Selector Table it's using; you'll need them later.
AM & AST Files
To replace or add new anims, you first need to make a copy of your AI's AM file.
To do this, navigate to BO3Root/share/raw/animtables and locate the AM file for your AI Actor (mentioned earlier).
If you're using the zm_usermap_zombie actor, you'll need the file mentioned below:
zm_genesis_zombie.ai_amSelect this file and copy it to MAP_FOLDER/animtables/
If the animtables folder doesn't exist, make it.
If the folder already contains the file, you can skip to the next step!
REPLACING ANIMS (traversals, run/walk anims, etc)
To replace an AI anim, open the .AI_AM file (the version in your map folder) and locate the anim that you want to replace.
Explanation of AI_AM file The file can look confusing at first but I'll try my best to explain it.
Take this line for example:
anim_zombie_walk_au_v0,ai_zombie_base_walk_au_v1The first part (anim_zombie_walk_au_v0) is the animation alias (think of this as a name)
The second part (ai_zombie_base_walk_au_v1) is the name of an animation (found in APE) that gets played on the zombie.
Any additional commas after this are just other possible animations for this anim alias.
After finding it, simply replace the name of the original animation with the new animation.
For example:
anim_zombie_run_au_v0,ai_zombie_base_run_au_v1becomes...
anim_zombie_run_au_v0,ai_zombie_run_v3ADDING NEW ANIMS (traversals, run/walk anims, etc)
Before reading this section, read the "REPLACING ANIMS (traversals, run/walk anims, etc)" to get an understanding of the AI_AM file.
To add to an AI anim, open the .AI_AM file (the version in your map folder) and locate the anim alias that you wish to add additional animations to.
After finding it, simply add a comma to the end of the line, followed by the name of the animation you want to add.
For example:
anim_zombie_run_au_v0,ai_zombie_base_run_au_v1becomes...
anim_zombie_run_au_v0,ai_zombie_base_run_au_v1,ai_zombie_run_v3The game will then pick one of these animations at random when needed.
FINISHING TOUCHES
You've done most of the work, now just head over to your map's .zone file (located at MAP_FOLDER/zone_source/MAPNAME.zone) and add these two lines:
//Custom Zombie Anims
rawfile,animtables/zm_genesis_zombie.ai_amThis part tells the compiler to override the normal versions of the AI_AM file with your new custom one.
TESTING
At this point, everything should be working! To test it out, go to the compiler, tick your map and tick link, before clicking build.
Once done, run your map and you should see your new animations pop-up in-game!
POTENTIAL ISSUES
The anims aren't working properly on the zombies (they look weird)
When importing zombie anims, they must work with the skeleton of the AI that'll be using them (usually the standard BO3 skeleton). If the anim is ripped from BO3, it should be fine. However, anims from other games will likely need to be converted to the BO3 skeleton to work properly.