MTM2 animates in two quite different ways, and both look like a broken model if you do not know.
A model can cycle one texture slot through a list of images — a flame, a spinning rotor. The viewer draws the first frame and lists the rest, so a model whose textures are all animated no longer appears to have none.
Each frame in the list can also name a sound, played when the cycle reaches it.
.ANI table. That is a
separate mechanism — DATA\<stem>.ANI, named by the
situation file, animating a texture across the whole level rather than a slot
inside one model. Same idea, different limits: the .ANI reader
caps names at 15 characters and keeps only eight frames. See
Filenames and their limits.
Some .BIN files hold no geometry at all — only the names of
the models that are their frames. MODELS\REX.BIN is 348 bytes and
names rex1.bin through rex4.bin, each a full 822-vertex
T-rex in a different pose.
C-POD draws frame 1 and says so across the top of the viewport. That
banner matters: without it you are looking at rex1.bin's mesh while
the file list says REX.BIN, and nothing on screen admits the
difference.
Underneath it is a Play control — or press A — which steps through the frames at the speed the file asks for. REX.BIN asks for one second a frame. It never starts on its own.
Right-click → Animation Frames lists every frame and where each one resolves from, the same way the texture list does for a model. That answers the question worth asking before you share a pod: a frame resolving out of a pod you happen to have and the recipient does not is an animation that plays perfectly here and not at all there.
