Holstering Weapons - mounting to another mount ...

#1 There's a couple ways you could go about it. If the weapon itself won't be changing and will always be the item going into the holster you can cheat a bit and have the exposed section of it be part of the player model. You can then you mesh hiding to hide that portion of the mesh while the weapon is in use and make visible when unmounting the weapon at the end of the holstering animation.

The other would be make another ShapeBaseImage datablock that will be for the weapon shape to be mounted when it's holstered. Think of it like an accessory version of the weapon, it would be just a barebones ShapeBaseImage. Then you just need to unmount the weapon from the player at the end of the holstering animation and then immediately mount the accessory weapon to the player's mountpoint located in the holster.

#2 ic that explains it, thx
guess i was goin to totally overcomplicate the whole thing oO

will have to go with option 2 since
i plan to give the model multiple mountpoints
and weapons will be holstered depending on size and usage

example a shotgun
would be holstered at the back
and a pistol either at the belt or chest
not that my puppet has a belt but you get the idea

#3 I agree with Scott, he just beat me to the post ;-) I think his second idea would be ideal if your weapons are 'customizable'. Think adding scopes or silencers etc.... I also think this version would be ideal for a TPS situation where you could see your...say sniper rifle on your back.... If that makes sense.

Ron

#4 hehe thx Ron

ye that is actually what i want to achieve, still a bit away from it
another thing that makes my brain melt is
stuff such as

takedown cinematics - like those seen in TAIK
(why would someone try to reinvent the wheel?? - well
like others am still waiting for the long overdue update and still no sign and not even a blink - so thats why)

#5 J,

I am nearly 100% certain that the TAIK uses 'special' animations to pull that off. I also think you could benefit from taking advantage of .BVH files. I know I have not shown anything from my animation experiments but, I use Poser 5 to capture a lot of my 'action' animations. Well, that in conjunction with iPi Mocap Studio 2. I capture in iPi and then refine in Poser and export to BVH. Then I add things via my MAX rigs. This of course would be at least similar to Blender in Concept.... As usual, just my 2 cents on the subject.

Ron

#6 ye currently my plan is to setup a animation database together with the puppetT3D project

and guess what they gonna be .bvh
now ic you did your research and you got the tools of the trade
however am more about oldschool - animate bone for bone
that way you can achieve good results aswell
and you learn alot too

and as Blender can important .bvh files
all you have todo is retarget the armature to the t3d rig
and done - well at least my test worked

#7 last year i spend considerable amount of time to achive that( from scripting side using stock weapons).
problem is that mount() functions's 2nd parameter is useless(when u are going to mount more then one weapon point on player) because of mountpoint(or mount,cant remeber) field (defined in ShapeBaseImage datablock).

if u go for script side editing then keep that in mind.
i had to spend lots of time to figure it out.


(and i have lost that script file.have to work with that again.)

#8 J,

You are correct, you should be able to move bone for bone. Anyone trying to do a similar animation should read this. Shoulda known you would have figured it out. (why didn't you join the MIT group once I left?... You should have).

Ron

#9 My perfect answer would have been this resource, which added a third parameter to mountImage that let you specify which mount point to use. But the code file was list in all the site transitioning. I may have a copy at home, where I will be soon, if anyone's interested. Unless anyone else still has a copy...

EDIT: For the record, the second parameter isn't useless... it just doesn't determine which node the image is mounted to.

#10 difference between imageSlot and mountPoint?


"I may have a copy at home, where I will be soon, if anyone's interested. Unless anyone else still has a copy..."

interested.it will save time from investigating through source.

#11 Every ShapeBase has something like 8 'slots' for images. They're just conceptual. Each slot can only have one image in it, and you get to choose what slot an image is mounted in. So if you do mountImage(ImageA, 0) then mountImage(ImageB, 0), then slot 0 ends up with ImageB in it (ImageB replaces ImageA). Slots are used for stuff like weapon triggers - signalling trigger 0 usually fires the image in slot 0.

Mount points refer to the actual node in the shape that images are mounted on, and correspond to nodes named mountX. The image datablock determines which mount point an image uses. So if ImageA's mountPoint is 0, it will be attached to the mount0 node no matter which slot it is in.

This is different to mountObject, in which case the second argument is actually the mount point, since mounted objects do not have slots.

#12 @Daniel
can you share the mountpoint resource
and is it updated for t3d v3 already
(even if not, no big deal, just would like to take a look at it)
thx for your time

#13 Yep, when I get home I'll check whether I do have it. If not it shouldn't be very difficult to recreate.