Model Question

#1 The games you mention use what's referred to as a view model for the 1st person view. The easiest way I can think of explaining it is imagine the 1st person weapon and arms being rendered in a separate GUI that is overlayed onto the main screen. The 1st person model is of high detail, the arms and weapon animate and don't protrude through walls however they do not cast a shadow and don't receive correct lighting, instead they receive lighting from a generic infinite light usually determined from the position of the sun. The 3rd person model is a separate model altogether, lower in detail (polys) and does not include arms. It is attached to the player's hands for 3rd person rendering and sometimes an IK Solver is used to animate the weapon with the movement of the arms.

What you need to do depends on which system you want to use and how you code it. The easiest way to obtain animated hands in Torque is to use this resource: First/Third Person Different Weapon Models.

The above resource uses two separate models, the weapon and arms for first person and just the weapon on its own for 3rd person rendering - however LOD is used to determine when to render each weapon therefore only one actual weapon DTS file is needed. The code changes are minimal, just a couple of lines, most of the work is done within the DTS.

Here's a short video of the above resource in one of my dead projects: AmmoBar.exe (13.3 MB Bink Exe)

#2 Thanks, it helps a lot!

btw, your project is so COOL though it's dead;(.