Animations and Path Following
by Matthew Peddlesden · in Torque Game Engine · 10/27/2006 (3:38 pm) · 1 replies
Hi Folks,
Starting to get my head around Blender and Torque now - i've got a model coming in to Torque nicely textured etc. Now i'm starting to think about path following and animation.
The game i'm looking at writing is a kind of train game, so you've got a model following a pre-defined path visually represented by a pair of rails and as it moves the wheels turn and numerous other "con rods" move around connecting the pistons to the wheels.
I think I can see now how to set an animation up using armitures in Blender which will let me set up the necessary motion for the wheels and rods so I think that's sorted - however there are two aspects I'm having difficulty with grasping.
1) Can I finely control the speed of animation playback? E.g. as the loco moves slowly the wheels will move slowly etc.
2) What would your thoughts be on the best route to implement the pathing of the track? Using the built in pathing or to come up with something new?
If using the built in pathing, is it possible to have much more 'fine' control over the following of it? When I dropped the bot on to a path it just started blasting around it - which is fine for the bot, but what I want is effectively to have the player confined to the path and as they speed up or slow down they move up or down it. Similarly, they need the ability at junctions to choose from a number of paths to proceed (which would have been set up by the time they get there and would just transition fluidly as if it were just one single path).
If I can master the necessary animation and movement along a path, the rest of the thing looks relatively simple! :)
Many thanks
Matt.
Starting to get my head around Blender and Torque now - i've got a model coming in to Torque nicely textured etc. Now i'm starting to think about path following and animation.
The game i'm looking at writing is a kind of train game, so you've got a model following a pre-defined path visually represented by a pair of rails and as it moves the wheels turn and numerous other "con rods" move around connecting the pistons to the wheels.
I think I can see now how to set an animation up using armitures in Blender which will let me set up the necessary motion for the wheels and rods so I think that's sorted - however there are two aspects I'm having difficulty with grasping.
1) Can I finely control the speed of animation playback? E.g. as the loco moves slowly the wheels will move slowly etc.
2) What would your thoughts be on the best route to implement the pathing of the track? Using the built in pathing or to come up with something new?
If using the built in pathing, is it possible to have much more 'fine' control over the following of it? When I dropped the bot on to a path it just started blasting around it - which is fine for the bot, but what I want is effectively to have the player confined to the path and as they speed up or slow down they move up or down it. Similarly, they need the ability at junctions to choose from a number of paths to proceed (which would have been set up by the time they get there and would just transition fluidly as if it were just one single path).
If I can master the necessary animation and movement along a path, the rest of the thing looks relatively simple! :)
Many thanks
Matt.
Torque Owner Mark Junior
1.) try peaking through starter.racing in tge theres the same thing, the faster you go the faster the wheels spin, hope this helps.