modding-guide

Create .rdm Animations with Blender

Many production buildings, public services or ornamental assets use animations to generate a more lively atmosphere. This short tutorial shows how to set up your own animation with Blender and get it to work in Anno 1800. As an example we will animate a small crane extracted from the heavy weapons factory:

vanilla crane

Requirements:

Ressources:

Download the model, cfg file and, for checking, an example .blend file in the releases section.

Step 1: Adjust Materials

Open an empty .blend file and import the cfg file via the Cfg Import / Export Addon.

Most Anno materials use the vertex format P4h_N4b_G4b_B4b_T2h, however for animated models you have to use the format P4h_N4b_G4b_B4b_T2h_I4b, otherwise the model will not show up in the game. To convert a material from one format to another, do the following in the material properties tab:

You have to do this for all materials applied to your model, no matter if the specific part is animated or not.

Step 2: Export / Re-Import your Model

I guess you usually export your model as a .rdm file from Blender with the Anno Import / Export Addon. For animation purposes you should export it as a .glb file:

Anno mirrors objects along the x-axis and so does the Import / Export Addon (if you haven´t unticked the „mirror along x“ in the addon preferences). If you open your exported model with a 3D-viewer of your choice you´ll see it´s mirrored. Anno will mirror it „back“ again, so ingame it looks like in Blender.

mirror

To create your animation, use the mirrored model. Therefore you have two options, both should do the trick:

Why the mirrored model if the I/E addon can mirror it and Anno mirrors it back anyway? Because the I/E addon doesn´t support animations at the moment. As you will see later, we can´t export our animated model, armature, bones and what else we need, > with this tool. We would have to export it via the Blender standard option „gltf 2.0“. As a consequence our model will not be mirrored along x (in a 3D viewer it > will look like in Blender). As we already know, Anno mirrors in any case, as a result we would get the wrong direction ingame and - even worse - all animations > > would play wrong. Have fun with doing the animations again.

Step 3: Add Vertex Groups

This works like any other animation in Blender, nothing specific with Anno. If you are already familiar with it, you can skip this part.

A vertex group consists of vertices you assigned to it. Each group can change location and rotation individually, although they are part of the same mesh. Exactly what you need for your animation :)

To define vertex groups…

vertex_group

add_group

select_faces

base_vertex_group

Step 4: Rigging

To be able to animate your model you need to add one more thing: Bones, which are connected to your vertex groups.

Imagine the vertex groups as your limbs, head, torso etc. and the bones as the skeleton which allows them to move

You will see that Blender automatically added a bone to the viewport and an armature to your outline on the left:

add_bone

add_bone

all_bones

identical_names

When you look at your outline you will see that the model is linked to the armature, in other words: Vertex groups and bones are linked and ready for animation :)

Step 5: Add an Animation

Now the fun part begins.

In this tutorial we will only create one work animation, as our idle animation is just „do nothing“ (as it is for most Anno vanilla animations). The idle animation will be added automatically by the rdm4-converter.

settings

first_keyframe

Optional: Select keying at the very bottom –> Active keying set –> Location, Rotation, Scale. With this setting you won´t have to select Location, Rotation and Scale anymore everytime you press I. parent

Many inconsistencies in your animations like clipping into other model parts may be caused by such missing „on hold“ keyframes.

Now you should see, that top and hook didn´t move and are still at their rest position. That is not what we want in this case. There are two options to solve this:

  1. Select not only the base bone but also top and hook bones and move them at the same time

    Only recommended if the bones move completely individually from each other for the most part of your animation. Otherwise it´s tedious to select every bone all the time and mistakes are likely.

  2. Parent bones

    Only recommended if the child bone(s) always move with their parent bone(s) (of course not necessarily vice versa). Do not parent if parent bone(s) should move without their child(s).

In this case you can use option 2, because top and hook should - of course - always move when the base moves. Top and hook can still move relatively to the base:

In the outline you can see a nested list: base is the parent of top and top is the parent of hook. When you move the base bone along the x-axis, top and hook move as well now.

parent

Now it´s up to you. Move the bones as you please, set keyframes, move bones… G and X = move along x G and Y = move along y G and Z = move along Z R and X = rotate around x R and Y = rotate around y R and Z = rotate around Z

Scaling is not supported by the rdm4 converter as far as I know. But who cares about scaling?

Don´t forget to Play your animation from time to time, so you encounter mistakes early and debugging is less frustrating!

The last keyframe…

If you want to do 360° rotations: Blender will choose the shortest path between two keyframes, so if you want to rotate a vertex group by 2pi… you will see nothing, the object won´t move. Solution: > Set more key frames. Even 180° is not stable in many cases, so I recommend an angle of 90° (4 key frames).
Example

Step 6: Export your Animation and Convert it to .rdm

export_selection

export settings

Usually the command is sth like: your_path/tools>rdm4-bin.exe -g=P4h_N4b_G4b_B4b_T2h_I4b -i your_path/tutorial_crane_lod0.glb -sa --no_transform

Be sure your mesh uses a different name than your vertex groups / bones. Otherwise you will get an error message by the rdm4 converter. It tells you to use the option –unstableIndex, but this will cause all your vertex group / bone names to be replaced with sth like „unnamedglftnode_01“.

After the converter has done its work, you will get a detailed list of what he did, including some yellow warnings regarding „output sampler not supported scale“ (remember: we didn´t do any scaling anyway, so just ignore these messages).

At the end of the list you may notice these lines:

time

This is the time in milliseconds your animation needs to run one loop. By default Anno uses milliseconds, Blender displays frames (although you can switch to seconds). If you plan to add some timed sounds to your animation or if you use multiple different animations which should start at certain time stamps you may find it helpful to switch between milliseconds and frames:

Example: If the animation uses 249 frames, time is 10.375 ms, what is exactly the time given by the rdm-converter. Example 2: If you want to play a sound, starting at keyframe 142 and ending at keyframe 212, you get 5916 ms and 8833 ms. Both numbers can be used in your cfg file (see step 7).

For this animation, the rdm converter generated three .rdm files: anim_0, anim_1 and out. anim_0 is your work01 animation (compare the file size), anim_1 the idle animation (much smaller file size) and out is the model itself.

Step 7: Add your Animation to your Building`s cfg

data/rdm/tutorial_crane_not_animated_lod0.rdm 
... to the name you chose for your model, e.g.
```XML
<FileName>data/rdm/tutorial_crane_lod0.rdm</FileName>

        </Transformer>
			<Animations>
				<Config>
					<ConfigType>ANIMATION</ConfigType>
					<LoopCount>0</LoopCount>
					<FileName>data\anims\tutorial_crane_work01.rdm</FileName>
					<Scale>4.000000</Scale>
				</Config>
				<Config>
					<ConfigType>ANIMATION</ConfigType>
					<LoopCount>0</LoopCount>
					<FileName>data\anims\tutorial_crane_idle01.rdm</FileName>
					<Scale>1.000000</Scale>
				</Config>
			</Animations>
		<Materials>

The Scale property determines the speed of the whole animation:

        <Sequences>
            <Config>
                <ConfigType>SEQUENCE</ConfigType>
                <SequenceID>1000</SequenceID>       <!--> Usually used for the idle animation <-->
                <Looped>1</Looped>      <!--> the animation should be played more than once right? <-->
                <DisableEffects>1</DisableEffects>      <!--> does what it´s called and for most cases should be true during idle <-->
                <RestartEffects>0</RestartEffects>      <!--> idk what this does exactly, haven´t seen any other value than 0 anyway <-->
                <Speed>1.000000</Speed>     <!--> idk, maybe the same as Scale, try if you dare <-->
                <Track>
                    <TrackID>1</TrackID>        <!--> Starts with value 1, 2, 3... n <-->			
                    <TrackElement>      <!--> For each <Type> there need to be an extra <TrackElement> <-->
                        <Type>2</Type>      <!--> 2 is used as <Type> in a <TrackElement> when defining the <Condition> for an animation being played <-->
                        <StartTime>0</StartTime>        <!--> time in ms when the animation should start <-->
                        <EndTime>1000</EndTime>         <!--> time in ms when the animation should end, for the idle animation this doesn´t really matter <-->
                        <Condition>32</Condition>       <!--> 32 is the standard flag for idle <-->
                    </TrackElement>
                    <TrackID>2</TrackID>
                    <TrackElement>
                        <Type>0</Type>      <!--> 0 is used as <Type> in a <TrackElement>, when referencing a <AnimationID> and <ModelID> <-->
                        <StartTime>0</StartTime>
                        <EndTime>1000</EndTime>
                        <AnimationID>1</AnimationID>        <!--> Starts with value 0, 1, 2... n; corresponds to the order of the animations of the model <-->
                        <ModelID>0</ModelID>        <!--> Starts with value 0, 1, 2... n; corresponds to the order of the models in the cfg <-->
                    </TrackElement>
                </Track>
            </Config>
            <Config>
                <ConfigType>SEQUENCE</ConfigType>
                <SequenceID>3000</SequenceID>       <!--> Usually used for the work animation <-->
                <Looped>1</Looped>
                <DisableEffects>0</DisableEffects>
                <RestartEffects>0</RestartEffects>
                <Speed>1.000000</Speed>
                <Track>
                    <TrackID>1</TrackID>				
                    <TrackElement>
                        <Type>2</Type>
                        <StartTime>0</StartTime>
                        <EndTime>12458</EndTime>        <!--> take the value from the rdm4 converter <-->
                        <Condition>64</Condition>       <!--> 64 is the standard flag for work <-->
                    </TrackElement>
                    <TrackID>2</TrackID>
                    <TrackElement>
                        <Type>0</Type>
                        <StartTime>0</StartTime>
                        <EndTime>12458</EndTime>
                        <AnimationID>0</AnimationID>
                        <ModelID>0</ModelID>
                    </TrackElement>
                </Track>
            </Config>
        </Sequences>

        <Sequence>
		    <Duration>1000</Duration>
		    <Looped>1</Looped>
		    <Speed>1</Speed>
		    <Id>1000</Id>
	    </Sequence>
	    <Sequence>
		    <Duration>12458</Duration>
		    <Looped>1</Looped>
		    <Speed>1</Speed>
		    <Id>3000</Id>
	    </Sequence>

FINISH :)

Special cases

  1. 360° rotations Blender will always choose the shortest path between two keyframes, so if you want to rotate a vertex group by 2pi… you will probably see nothing, the object won´t move. The solution is to set more key frames. Even 180° is not stable in many cases, so I recommend an intervall of 90° (4 key frames in total).

  2. Conveyor belt animations These are completely different from what we´ve done in this tutorial so far. They are much easier, since Anno handles them directly as a texture, which gets scrolled automatically, when the building “works”. So all you need is a suitable texture: Everything on this map scrolls, thus you need a small extra map only for the conveyor (have a look at the biscuit multifactory maps for an example)
    In the cfg file there is only one property you have to consider. Given, the following code is part of a factory with a conveyor, the conveyor uses its own texture and makes use of <cTexScrollSpeed>

         <Config>
                 <ConfigType>MATERIAL</ConfigType>
                 <VertexFormat>P4h_N4b_G4b_B4b_T2h</VertexFormat>        <!--> no _I4b needed <-->
                 <Common>Common</Common>
                 <TerrainAdaption>TerrainAdaption</TerrainAdaption>
                 <Environment>Environment</Environment>
                 <Glow>Glow</Glow>
                 <WindRipples />
                 <ShaderID>8</ShaderID>
                 <NumBonesPerVertex>0</NumBonesPerVertex>
                 <PARALLAX_MAPPING_ENABLED>1</PARALLAX_MAPPING_ENABLED>
                 <VERTEX_COLORED_TERRAIN_ADAPTION>0</VERTEX_COLORED_TERRAIN_ADAPTION>
                 <ABSOLUTE_TERRAIN_ADAPTION>0</ABSOLUTE_TERRAIN_ADAPTION>
                 <cUseLocalEnvironmentBox>1</cUseLocalEnvironmentBox>
                 <WIND_RIPPLES_ENABLED>0</WIND_RIPPLES_ENABLED>
                 <DisableReviveDistance>0</DisableReviveDistance>
                 <cTexScrollSpeed>0.030000</cTexScrollSpeed>     <!--> very sensitive, for slow speeds use values between 0.01 - 0.05 <-->
                 <cParallaxScale>1.000000</cParallaxScale>
                 <cEnvironmentBoundingBox.x>0.000000</cEnvironmentBoundingBox.x>
                 <cEnvironmentBoundingBox.y>0.000000</cEnvironmentBoundingBox.y>
                 <cEnvironmentBoundingBox.z>0.000000</cEnvironmentBoundingBox.z>
                 <cEnvironmentBoundingBox.w>4.000000</cEnvironmentBoundingBox.w>
                 <cWindRippleTiling>0.200000</cWindRippleTiling>
                 <cWindRippleSpeed>1.000000</cWindRippleSpeed>
                 <cWindRippleNormalIntensity>0.200000</cWindRippleNormalIntensity>
                 <cWindRippleMeshIntensity>0.200000</cWindRippleMeshIntensity>
                 <METALLIC_TEX_ENABLED>1</METALLIC_TEX_ENABLED>
                 <cUseTerrainTinting>0</cUseTerrainTinting>
                 <SEPARATE_AO_TEXTURE>0</SEPARATE_AO_TEXTURE>
                 <DIFFUSE_ENABLED>1</DIFFUSE_ENABLED>
                 <NORMAL_ENABLED>1</NORMAL_ENABLED>
                 <DYE_MASK_ENABLED>0</DYE_MASK_ENABLED>
                 <HEIGHT_MAP_ENABLED>0</HEIGHT_MAP_ENABLED>
                 <SELF_SHADOWING_ENABLED>0</SELF_SHADOWING_ENABLED>
                 <WATER_CUTOUT_ENABLED>0</WATER_CUTOUT_ENABLED>
                 <ADJUST_TO_TERRAIN_HEIGHT>0</ADJUST_TO_TERRAIN_HEIGHT>
                 <GLOW_ENABLED>1</GLOW_ENABLED>
                 <NIGHT_GLOW_ENABLED>0</NIGHT_GLOW_ENABLED>
                 <Name>material_35_scroll</Name>
                 <cModelDiffTex>data\dlc08\graphics\mod_buildings\subway_factory\maps\subway_conveyor_diff.psd</cModelDiffTex>
                 <cModelNormalTex>data\dlc08\graphics\mod_buildings\subway_factory\maps\subway_conveyor_norm.psd</cModelNormalTex>
                 <cModelMetallicTex>data\dlc08\graphics\mod_buildings\subway_factory\maps\subway_conveyor_metal.psd</cModelMetallicTex>
                 <cSeparateAOTex>data/graphics/effects/default_model_mask.png</cSeparateAOTex>
                 <cNightGlowMap>0</cNightGlowMap>
                 <cDiffuseColor.r>1.000000</cDiffuseColor.r>
                 <cDiffuseColor.g>1.000000</cDiffuseColor.g>
                 <cDiffuseColor.b>1.000000</cDiffuseColor.b>
                 <cEmissiveColor.r>1.660463</cEmissiveColor.r>
                 <cEmissiveColor.g>1.418585</cEmissiveColor.g>
                 <cEmissiveColor.b>0.967514</cEmissiveColor.b>
             </Config>