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Mech / Robot Rigging

by Britt Scott · in Artist Corner · 08/05/2008 (12:14 am) · 2 replies

Hopefully this is the right forum for this question... Is it better to use a bone system or just link the objects together to animate a mech? I'm currently using a bone system in 3ds max. I modeled each piece of the mech, then attached them all together. Each Element(piece) then got selected and a skin modifier added to it. After doing this to about 10 pieces, I realized on export that the DTS exporter only sees the top skin file. Thus, only skinning to the mech's foot. The DSQ sequence loaded in showtool, but there was no animations, so I'm pretty sure that is what is happening. So, is a bone system not the way to go?
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Associate Britt Scott

About the author

Attended Brown College in Mendota Heights, MN for Game Design and Development. Projects include the Mech Starter Kit and the Battle Frog. Currently working toward a game design career.

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    Associate Logan Foster
    perPixel Studios
    #1
    08/05/2008 (8:11 am)
    Personally I always use some sort of rig for any DTS shape I am exporting (unless you are talking about something really simplistic). The reason for this is that you will not screw up the transforms on the mesh/geometry. The rig itself can be as simple as dummy boxes linked together to form a hierarchy or as complex as a custom bones or biped solution.

    You do not need to use the skin modifier to have the pieces follow the rig you have made up (unless you actually want the vertecies to deform as the model moves), simply linking them to the appropriate parts of the rig hierarchy is enough.

    FYI: You can have multiple objects with the skin modifier in a DTS scene. I would check to ensure you do not have anything such as duplicate names on your geometry pieces for your mech. I would also check to ensure that you have setup and configured your detail information correctly on each mesh that you are trying to export.

    Associate Britt Scott
    #2
    08/05/2008 (11:14 am)
    Thanks! I will try all of the above.