Character tutorial?

#101

Quote:At this point everything gets a little fuzzy: in the video, the guy carefully copies the ending 128 from the detail128 dummy, then proceeds to add 128 onto the end of the names of all his mesh-pieces. However, I am unsure as to exactly why.

He then brings up the schematic vide again and uses it to select an object, which he similarly renames.

if you look at the docs for LOD your detail number and the mesh name goes hand in hand. Since i didn't set up LOD for the character the I suffixed the mesh with the highest detail. If i made Lod models The suffix for them would have a suffix matching the LOD numbers.

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Again the video gets a little bit fuzzy as the guy uses Torsion to launch the game. That MIGHT be all hes doing but I cannot really say for sure if this is an important step or not.

Yes I am loading to model to see if it loads

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Really not sure whats going on in this step, the video is showing the Shape Editor in Torque, he brings up the character he just exported, rotates around in it, goes through some settings but it is not clear what he is doing or checking, then he goes back to MAX.

Yes I looked around the model to make sure that it looked okay and to make sure them mesh was not breaking. Then I saw the CAT bones were visible. To fix this you just make a invisible material and assign it to the CAT bones.

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Everything is unclear from here, but we do see the character working in Torque so clearly the process works. Except the animations arent working.

Animations you load separately using the shape editor.

#102 Ok, thank you for clearing up those sticking point.

Could you elaborate on that last part, loading animations in the shape editor?

#103 One of the tabs in the shape editor are for sequences, this is where you load animation sequences for your character. I think this is in the docs somewhere

#104 Could you possibly elaborate a bit more? The docs look like they were written by someone who'd never actually used the system. Just ramble for a bit, I'll translate later.

#105 http://docs.garagegames.com/torque-3d/official/index.html?content/documentation/World%20Editor/Editors/ShapeEditor.html

Add Sequence.

Sequences store the individual animation sets run, idle, jump etc. You can mix the same sequence with any model as long as they share the same bone setup.

#106 All right, I think it's all starting to make sense now. I am going to have to experiment for some time but I think I am finally getting an idea here. Hey, the good news is now that I see how its set up, it IS actually configured in a way that makes sense to me! Well almost. In any event we are making progress.

#107 Can't get it to work.

In my 3DAAK game I can load the character in the shape editor and see it, but I cannot get the game to load with that character replacing Maco(the default character).

in a standard Torque3D build such as the FPS Turorial I cannot get the mesh to load at all.

Exported file and original max file here.

#108 Maybe I am just stuck on the wrong spot.

I have a character, I can see it working in Torque, he loads up the default animations and everything... now how do I make that character the player-character?

#109 Are you using the default Torque or the RPG Engine

#110 Default torque.

#111 look for player.cs

The linkage use there needs to replaced by your character. Alternateively you can duplicate player.cs and make your own. Then change the default player to your cloned one. The default player can be found in gamemode.cs or game.cs. It's been a while but i do believe its in there. Note: Default player is set in more than one place so change it in all places that you need.

#112 Ok. So.

To make my .cs file, I used the default soldier_rigged.cs as a template. I also manually assigned some animation paths in the shape editor.

I exported the character as "soldier_rigged.DAE" to make things simple. In order to be able to work with it before making it the primary, I put it in a folder labeled "test" and then went in and applied all the animations. I then renamed "Soldier" to "Soldier_old" and "test" to "Soldier" and tried to launch the game.

First off, I get an error message. It says "Unable to create player with class Player and datablock DefaultPlayerData. Starting in Observer instead."

Torsion is also giving out a series of errors that look like this:

scripts/server/gameCore.cs (614): Unable to find object: '' attempting to call function 'clearWeaponCycle'


So I know I am still doing something wrong. But I still feel progress.

#113 Ok, so I tried something new. I took an unedited copy of the entire Soldier folder, then I over-wrote soldier_rigged.chached.dts and soldier_rigged.DAE with my own DAE files, launched the game, and low-and-behold it works! I can see my terrible character running around in-engine!!!!

It doesn't work very WELL because as it happens I did not put very much time or energy into properly rigging or skinning the character, but that is entirely because I wanted to get the basic process worked out before I started sweating the finer details.

So, I won't declare victory juuuuust yet because there is still a lot of confusion, but this is something. This is really something.