I'm trying to do weapon reloads...3D guy says no go. Why?
by Scott McGlasson · in Torque Game Engine · 10/26/2001 (3:10 pm) · 7 replies
I was speaking to our modeler for the C3 team last night about doing weapon reload animations for our characters. He told me that this would pose a problem and be very difficult.
I mentioned the plethora of Halflife mods that use reload animations. He countered with the fact that those characters are done using skeletal bipeds. He added that Torque does not support the use of said skeletal bipeds.
Is this true? Are my ubercool weapon reload animations doomed to failure? Do I need a new 3D guy?
Scott McGlasson
Codex Interactive
I mentioned the plethora of Halflife mods that use reload animations. He countered with the fact that those characters are done using skeletal bipeds. He added that Torque does not support the use of said skeletal bipeds.
Is this true? Are my ubercool weapon reload animations doomed to failure? Do I need a new 3D guy?
Scott McGlasson
Codex Interactive
#3
The Engine does support skeletal animation, but I am at a loss as to why the lack of the capability would prevent one from making reload animations.
10/26/2001 (6:19 pm)
Hmm,The Engine does support skeletal animation, but I am at a loss as to why the lack of the capability would prevent one from making reload animations.
#4
Logan
10/27/2001 (12:13 pm)
Although Bipeds and Bones for skeletons are two different means to achieve and end, so I can't see why this wouldn't work (or why you shouldn't at least try it once to see how well that it works out). It might require some extra effort on the part of the animators, but if they're as good as they claiim they are, they shouldn't have trouble doing this.Logan
#5
11/01/2001 (10:56 am)
well reload animations shouldnt be a problem as i see it, the dts supports animations ok or you could export them as dsq and execute them in your .cs file
#6
11/03/2001 (6:36 pm)
I really don't remember saying you can't do reload animations, from what I know it is 100% possible. And I didn't say player models don't use bones or a biped I said they only support vertex animation and not Physique or Skin, although you can export it, from what I've heard in the www.polycount.com forums it collapses it into raw vertex animation and it slows down the game dramatically, that's why Tribes 2 models are segmented. I also heard they have since added support for it into the Torque engine so it only matters to people who are making Tribes 2 mods not to people who own the engine.
#7
The engine supports skeletal animation. The bones are there in the engine defroming the mesh in real time. You can have several sequences controlling the character at the same time and the coders can even go in and grab the nodes directly.
The way most people set up their files, it does end up collapsing it down into raw vertex animation and slows down the game and makes the files HUGE.
There is a small speed hit for using real time mesh deformation, but it is not that big.
Physique is not supported for real time deforamable meshes. The skin modifier is supported.
The ability to do deformable meshes is present in Tribes 2, I just isn't in the game. I was using the exact same exporter on two other games using the DTS exporter, and before we were able to use the individual games to test, I was testing my shapes in the development build of Tribes 2.
I don't know exactly why they (the Tribes team) chose to continue using segmented player characters in Tribes 2. I thought there were a few good reasons why they chose what they did. It is not because of the reasons you stated because that is simply not the case.
Be careful where you get your information from.
11/03/2001 (6:54 pm)
The statements you heard on polycount are incorrect.The engine supports skeletal animation. The bones are there in the engine defroming the mesh in real time. You can have several sequences controlling the character at the same time and the coders can even go in and grab the nodes directly.
The way most people set up their files, it does end up collapsing it down into raw vertex animation and slows down the game and makes the files HUGE.
There is a small speed hit for using real time mesh deformation, but it is not that big.
Physique is not supported for real time deforamable meshes. The skin modifier is supported.
The ability to do deformable meshes is present in Tribes 2, I just isn't in the game. I was using the exact same exporter on two other games using the DTS exporter, and before we were able to use the individual games to test, I was testing my shapes in the development build of Tribes 2.
I don't know exactly why they (the Tribes team) chose to continue using segmented player characters in Tribes 2. I thought there were a few good reasons why they chose what they did. It is not because of the reasons you stated because that is simply not the case.
Be careful where you get your information from.
Torque Owner Matthew Shapiro
Either way i don't see why it woudl still be a problem. unless you couldn't do any animations... you just make an animation for reloading the weapon and call on it in scripts whenever you want the player to reload.