I have made 2 Blender files with Halo CE Elite animations.
One file is for “normal” Elites: Minor and Major. The other is for special Elites: Commander and SpecOps.
I also have a file for the Elite corpse that Keyes found. It has no animations because it is dead. But, if you want, you can open the file and watch it lying there being dead. You can also inspect its chest wound. You couldn’t really see it in the cutscene.
Blender
You will need to run Blender to open the file and play the animations. You can get Blender from here. You will need, at least, version 5.2 LTS as that was the version used to make the file. It is free software and is used by professional and amateur 3D artists.
Zip File
Download this zip file and extract it to a folder on your machine.
The file contents are:
- initial-elite-animations-textures.blend – the Blender project file containing a normal Elite model and animations. This is the file you will open with blender. Has Elite Minor and Major.
- initial-elite-special-animations-txtures.blend – has Elite Commander (Gold) and SpecOps.
- elite-corpse.blend – the corpse that Keyes found in 343 Guilty Spark
Note:
I use high def images to show dialogs. I have decided not to have new images for every type of Halo unit so I will reuse images for Grunt files instead of every unit’s files. Hopefully this wont be too confusing.
And I’m going to use the word unit for everything so I can copy/paste text without having to edit it so much.
To open the files
When you want to open the first file: don’t double click the file to open it. We want to make sure that Load UI is enabled. This will ensure that your Blender User Interface matches that set when the file was authored. This ensures that the UI matches the usage instructions given below.
So run Blender first and select File / Open from the app’s main menu.
You will see this dialog displayed.
Click the gear icon on the top right corner.
You should see this.
Make sure that the Load UI is checked then open the file.
The app should look like one of these once the file is opened.
Before continuing: Don’t worry about learning Blender. For these animations you only need to know how to move the view, choose an animation, press Play, and select unit colour variants. The instructions below show you all of those things.
Note:
The Elite corpse doesn’t have animations but the other files do.
The large area showing the unit is called the 3D Viewport (I’ll just call it the 3D view)
The animation chosen is a unit death animation. When you play it you will recognise it as the swimming animation.
To move the 3D view
Some animations are bigger than others (the unit moves further).
You might want to zoom out to see them, or look at them from a different angle, or pan the view.
Look at the top right corner of the 3D view:
Do you see these controls?
If you left click on the coloured lollipops and drag then you can rotate the view about the origin. It is a bit fiddley, small movements are best. I think that this is a bad UI. If your cursor goes over the panes to the right of the controls then the unit can spin uncontrollably. If you are panning then you can lose the unit. If that happens: press the Home button on your keyboard. The unit should be re-centered.
Do you see the white hand? Left click and drag to pan the view.
Use your mouse scroll wheel to zoom in and out.
To play an animation
The controls you need are at the bottom of the Animation view.
Just press the play button (the triangle that points to the right).
You should see the unit start swimming then pause for a long time. This happens because Blender, by default, gives you 255 frames in the scene. Let’s say the unit’s swimming animation is only 27 frames long then Blender will play the last frame 228 times before it wraps back to the beginning.
You can install the add-on in action_frame_range_sync.py to fix this problem. It sets the number of frames played to the exact length of the animation. It does this every time you pick a new animation.
Click here for instructions on installing the add-on and how to verify that it is safe. The rest of this page assumes that it is installed and enabled.
Selecting different animations
This is done using the controls at the bottom of the Animation view.
You can see a dropdown button to the left of the name of the currently selected animation.
This is it zoomed in.
Click the V shaped, down arrow to get a list of possible animations.
Pick one and press the play button to watch it run.
Pro-tip: leave the animations playing and the new animation will start looping as soon as it is picked.
What if I break something?
This is unlikely but the Blender UI is very context sensitive and the list of animations at the bottom of the Animation view will become empty if you change a selection in a different part of the UI.
For example:
Do you see this selection window at the top right of the Animation view? (The Blender term for this selection window is the Outliner).
You can see that Armature is selected.
Look at the animation controls at the bottom of the view. In particular look at the dropdown that selects the animations, they are all there.
Let’s select something else:
Where have the animations gone?
Don’t worry, you can get the list back by selecting the Armature again.
Another example:
Do you see the properties window below the selection window?
Pose Position must be selected for the animations to work. If you accidentally select Rest Position, the unit will return to its default unanimated pose and no animation will play. To fix: just select Pose Position again.
The rest position will come in handy when you want to compare units from different Halo games because the units will be standing in the same way.
If you think that you have broken something then try the File / Revert option from the app’s main menu.
When you open a new file or quit the app, and you have made changes, then the app will ask you if you want to save the changes. Just say no.
How to pick unit variants
There are several unit variants: Minor, Major, Commander (Gold), SpecOps, etc. They differ in their colours.
If you install the addon halo-unit-variant-add-on.py then you will be able to change the Elite variant in the 3D View. You don’t need this, by default you get an Elite Minor or a Gold.
Click here for instructions on installing the add-on and how to verify that it is safe.
Finally
You now know how to select different animations and play them. See if you can find your favourite Halo unit animations from the game.