Enemy vehicle mesh damage

#1 I believe you need to make a VISibililty animation sequence with the 'perfect parts' being in a nonrendered state for all sequences except a special naming convention applied to it, 'damage'.

Stock engine code 'should' assess the damage level of the object and play this animation[rendering damage meshes] at an incremented level from 0--1, based upon current damage level. So, for example, you might have your auto geometry groups duplicated and then deformed to appear as though dents get deeper, etc...and have say 5 sets of them[very large DTS file I'm sure], each rendering in turn on/off as each succeeding level of damage is passed, until the sequence reaches the end, then final visible level of geometry is rendering.

Think of this concept like LOD's...as more damage accrues, a new mesh will be visible and others not.

This is an Artist's solution to the question...I know TGE 1.5.2 has this as a stock feature, you just need the appropriate art for it to work! For example; take the any TribesII DTS player shape, and put it in TGE 1.5.2 and then start to let the crossbolts bolts fly! You'll see Decals being applied[type of Visibility coding], as damage accrues to the player....nice. One of the 'stock' features of TribesII[and legacy bound in TGE] that wasn't really hawked as a 'feature'...??

I did this for the commercial CombatStarterKit for DreamGames in the HGT vehicle, using IFL animations on a computer screen to inform those sitting in the back, without the HUD alerts, of impending doom....with a final "GET OUT" printing to the monitor of fire control. heh-heh


Good luck!

#2 Thank you for your reply Rex! :D

I have been reading up on Visibility animation and animation in general for the past couple of hours. Creating animations is new territory for us at this point.

I do have another question. I am reading that a DSQ sequence does not support visibility animations. And that you need to export DTS's.

What do you know about COLLADA files? We have been using the COLLADA format for pretty much everything in our game. Do you know if this format supports visibility animation?

Thanks a lot Rex.

- RTCIII

#3 You would need to 'embed' or 'preload' the sequences into the vehicle, yes' most exporters will allow for this. That is a 'standard' practice with animations that are shape specific and not meant to be shared across shapes. The IFL I spoke of earlier, was done this way, with animations accompanying the DTS upon export.

I am not certain about Collada and the visibility animation support. That would be a Chris R. question, who is writing the Collada Loader for T3D.

You could do this sort of visibility animation in as low end modeling program as Milkshape3D, in fact you could do most exporting at the Milkfarm.

Good luck!