3ds max and finishing modelling

I have made my first unit, a hover tank, but am having trouble with the tutorials. The animation dummies. I am not sure of how to make them specifically. Everything i have done so far has been done from scratch. Texture and Model. I have uploaded it as an attachment along with the texture. In it you will find that the model is animated 422 frames in all. I used 3ds max 7 (i found a free trial if anyone wants it as it still works with the plugins message me)

Like i said i need a little push here because the tutorials go a little fuzzy here. I goto maxscripts and then the active sequences section all i have are: EMPTY_SEQUENCE_AT_0f. Any help in animating this thing would be great.

if it helps:

My animation flow and corrisponding frames:

0-60 Heal
60-180 Idle
180-200 Run
200-215 RangedFortify
215-315 RangedIdle
315-336 RangedHurtA
336-357 RangedStrike
357-392 RangedDie
392-422 RangedDie_Fade
[End Animation]

Correction: I corrected a small animation problem on frame 215 where i did not set the key for the animation of the cannon and front turret to its beginning position.

You should ask the question in the tutorial thread.

The_J said:

You should ask the question in the tutorial thread.

Click to expand...

actually, there is a sticky in the tutorial that says to post questions here. The tutorial section is for tutorials and guides only.

What i basically need to know is how to create helper dummies for the animations. Thats the nutshell.

http://civilized.worldserve.de/download/civ4/docs/3D_Units.pdf

I have been using this guide and it gets fuzzy on the actual CREATION of said dummies. Or my understanding falls off at that point.

LordVoltron said:

actually, there is a sticky in the tutorial that says to post questions here. The tutorial section is for tutorials and guides only.

Click to expand...

Its good to see some people can still follow instructions. Yeah you should start threads asking questions here and not in the tutorial forums. But if you post your question in the thread of the turorial that you have a question about, that is ok. That will usually draq the attention of the tutorial creator and/or someone that follows or knows about the subject. However with questions concerning 3ds Max, you did good posting here. Almost nobody uses Max anymore and all those that wrote the various Max tutorials are no longer active.

LordVoltron said:

What i basically need to know is how to create helper dummies for the animations. Thats the nutshell.

http://civilized.worldserve.de/download/civ4/docs/3D_Units.pdf

I have been using this guide and it gets fuzzy on the actual CREATION of said dummies. Or my understanding falls off at that point.

Click to expand...

Enen though that tutorial was done by a Firaxis person, it is not great at conveying info to a beginner. There is an art to teaching other than just knowing the subject. Do a search in the tutorials section fro 3dsMax and check them out if your serious about learning it. Specifically this one:
Sharick's Complete Guide to Creating Units in 3ds Max
I know for a fact it deals with animation dummies, but knowing nothing of them myself, it might not be specific enough for you. I usually stray from creating wholly new animations from scratch with Max and just opt to adapting pre-existing ones.

My advice, since you only have a 30 day copy, is to finish your hovertank unit up and then get Blender. Its free, so thats half the battle there. Unless you find a copy on torrent or want to pay a crapton of money for a full version. Although 3dsMax is a very powerful tool and is capable of several things Blender is not, its still alot of trouble to go through when so many here do so much with Blender.