Chariots taking me for a ride!

[GrumpyOldMan]

Hi All

Just spent a week and a half nursing everyone here through flu A, really sick of being Florence Nightingale .

With the floating weapons, have people been modifying the default weapon poses to match the new skeletons? The bone_Rhand and bone_Lhand are placed at the global position of the bones in the skeleton. If the new position of the hand bones is down and in, then the weapons will indeed float away from the bodies if a standard weapon pose is used.

I haven't tried the anim utilities on them yet but it's not too hard to manually alter them with a hex editor like XVI32.

Cheers

GrumpyOldMan

[KnightErrant]

Hi Bwian and GrumpyOldMan,

Sorry about the flu; have to keep remembering the plague runs
a half year off in Australia. This question isn't a "will this help"
question but more a "for more own knowledge" question. What is
the purpose of CA's weapons and shield bones? I just followed
what was in the mesh files but you had your own weapon bones
and shield nones for that. I do remember Caliban warning that it
wasn't a good idea to animate the extra weapon/shield bones because
you got bad animations and this seems to exemplify that; but do you have
a reason for it?

For animations I've ignored them as bones that don't need to be
dealt with but with the problems being reported I do wonder if
I'm totally wrong about that.

Just somewhat perplexed, but that is my usual state....

KE

[Bwian]

Small question ... I am assuming that the object we need to change is in the /weapon subdirectory of the animation set. The other anims are all changed when KE's animation routine is run...and that one is not.

I can see the sense in changing the data in it in line with thechnages we have made to the actual model basepose ... but what exactly do I need to change, and how do I go about it? The stuff all comes out in a bundle of gibberish and a small chunk of hex numbers .... where do I get the values from and what do I change?

[GrumpyOldMan]

Hi KE

Hi Bwian and GrumpyOldMan,

Sorry about the flu; have to keep remembering the plague runs
a half year off in Australia. This question isn't a "will this help"
question but more a "for more own knowledge" question. What is
the purpose of CA's weapons and shield bones? I just followed
what was in the mesh files but you had your own weapon bones
and shield nones for that. I do remember Caliban warning that it
wasn't a good idea to animate the extra weapon/shield bones because
you got bad animations and this seems to exemplify that; but do you have
a reason for it?

For animations I've ignored them as bones that don't need to be
dealt with but with the problems being reported I do wonder if
I'm totally wrong about that.

Just somewhat perplexed, but that is my usual state....

KE

My guess is that at one point CA were going to provide animated weapons, bows, banners on lances, flails etc, but this got put into the too hard basket - rotation and synchronisation probably the culprits. Each weapon has it's own skeleton with pelvis, R(or L)hand and either one or two bones for the weapon. When the figure is moved to the next frame, the animation matrices are calculated for the basic figure - the animation matrix is extracted for the hand and applied to the same named bone in the weapon skeleton, a further matrix for the weapon bone is calculated and applied to the weapon vertices/faces. Maybe they'll use animated weapons in the new project they're announcing at Leipzig

Cheers

GrumpyOldMan

[GrumpyOldMan]

Hi Bwian

Small question ... I am assuming that the object we need to change is in the /weapon subdirectory of the animation set. The other anims are all changed when KE's animation routine is run...and that one is not.

I can see the sense in changing the data in it in line with thechnages we have made to the actual model basepose ... but what exactly do I need to change, and how do I go about it? The stuff all comes out in a bundle of gibberish and a small chunk of hex numbers .... where do I get the values from and what do I change?

Yes sorry it's the weapon cas that is stored in the weapon sub-directory of the figure's animation. What needs to be changed is the position value for the bone_Rhand (or Lhand). I'd suggest using the sword_default.cas as a template from the new_swordsman since that seems to be used regularly and is fairly simple.

Bwian - how can you say that all you see is a bundle of gibberish - this is important stuff here and has a beauty all it's own .

Have a look at the highlighted part of the following:-



This is the part that shows where it has to be updated. The first three float values are the position of the hand.

Now to get the value requires requires some addition. What you'll have to do is go through the hierarchy of your new skeleton from pelvis to hand and add all your local positions together to give you a global position for the new hand (remember to invert the 'x' value if working from Milkshape) - so starting at the pelvis add all the 'x' values together in the chain, 'y' values, etc. Fiddly but you only have to do it once for each new skeleton/weapon.

Cheers

GrumpyOldMan

[Bwian]

Whilst I can see the immense cosmic symettry of the hexadecimal form THIS is beauty:



Those are just numbers

Bought her last year for those few short weeks when the rain isn't falling! Got a big trailbike for the winter.

[GrumpyOldMan]

Hi Bwian

Whilst I can see the immense cosmic symettry of the hexadecimal form THIS is beauty:



Those are just numbers

Bought her last year for those few short weeks when the rain isn't falling! Got a big trailbike for the winter.

Good Lord Man!!! Some stole more than half your car when you weren't looking!!!!!!

Cheers

GrumpyOldMan

[KnightErrant]

Bwian,

That puppy is beautiful! However, if I get my digital camera working
I'll post my zero-turn riding lawnmower. Hardly a head-turner but infinitely
practical here...

KE

[Bwian]

If I took her for a spin on the lawn, I wouldn't have much grass left !!!

Unfortunately my workaday bike is less impressive, but far more practical! Mind you...after a hard day at the office, an 1100cc Suzuki Katana does a lot to reduce stress. She moves well for a 25 year old machine too.

Wanted one of these since I was a kid, and now I got one. Best bit is, it's every bit as good as I thought it would be