Animating models in 3D Software

One of my goals for the Max Payne movie was to show some sets of new animations for WoW Models. I didn't want to be constrained by the original Blizz animations from the Modelviewer, I wanted to create new fresh looking animations for this movie. This is also some kind of experimental phase for VoC II, cause one of the great battles in this movie could be probably complete edited in a 3D animation software. This would open numerous new opportunities for e.g. camera angles and open a path to a new machinima experience.

So for the first time I started to play around with exporting and importing m2 files (the filetype Blizz uses for their models). At the moment I found no way to export the bones of the models (and of course the animations) too. So I had to play around with bones and things like this for myself. It took a couple of hours to understand the techniques but at least I found a smooth way to implement the bones and make first own animations.

Here you can see some of the results.

Max jumps sidewards with a gun ready to shoot held in front of his body:

Cleaner gets hit by the bullets in his left shoulder and turns around backwards.