Yes
I thought it was just my eyes
I did use a null object to rotate and maybe thats ended up in the mix. Lets hope, cause I didn't see any of that in the raven file. I assume you jus tadd a keyframe where suits as normal. Logically you would put another bone for the beak to open, but this seems to have uses beyond following the bone direction if you see what I mean. things could move in the opposite direction for example. I could make a steering wheel move the tyres - I think.
Ben I apologize for not getting this up sooner...though they are all very very broken right now, you may be able to use one of the 3 thats in this zip.
Also, John may have remade this with a proper skeleton also that you might be interested in toying with instead, but if you want em, here they are.
All three have their own work in progress states (knight.mqo walks forward a lil, knight 2 walks in place and knighttest, well i forgot what it does )
Ok
No question that there is unwanted deformation with this morphing and rotation. I think it only calculates a straight line of movement between the verts of the two objects. A curve is what is needed for doing any major movements. That straight line is then extrapolated for the negative axis which then gets silly. So small deformations only. The freeze curve button leads me to think there maybe more though.
Does the knight need to walk on the spot for the game or literally move and walk?
I think it needs to move forward, though I am uncertain how far and fast at this point.
Ben has had luck with an npc that moves around ok but I have not yet gotten it to work, mine always return to the start position...JDO sent me an email though that basically says its an issue with the x to mdl converter putting things in the wrong order so when I get home tonight Ill anxiously be checking that out.
Hwitvlf - thats just what I thought but think of it as moving from A to B no matter where they start from. from right to left I spun the cube 100deg on the Y axis the squashing is because the individual vert moves as the crow to the target. This is why you have to use clone so as keep the same number of verts. Has its uses though.
And todays finding
With keynote on just keep pressing G on the keyboard for the various menus. If there are the relevant tags in the object panel, then you will get one for that. If you've tried the morphing (ie elem in object panel) then that will appear.
Currently working on 'select' tag which shows up as an offshoot of the second press of G. I think its something to do with morphing a morph? but I'll keep you posted.
There appears to be two more tags - 'coll' (collision) and 'soft' (soft body) and these would then introduce us to the screen that Hwitvlf showed way back in this thread though until we know the code for the mat panel its going to stay rather elusive. I will try and post a Q on mqdl's forum, if he doesn't know!
I'll be glad once all this is done and can get on with producing something!
Mark
OK ive done some more work on the knight thanks to your skeleton'ing John.
I have some interesting things to note....you may already know this and very well may have posted about it on Holy Diver's site but it is down at the moment and I can't read the posts you have there or make a new post about this, so I am posting here until his site is back up.
When I used your skeleton I successfully had the enemy/npc moving foward toward the player, everything works as desired except I now have the landshark problem.
So I did some testing, I added a bone not attached to any object and had it move with the model during the walking animation...didnt change anything as far as the landsharking is concerned, but it did pin my enemy to the 0,0,0 point and wouldnt advance toward the player...not even during the animation that would typically move it forward (so if you have an unanchored bone it will totally pin your model to the start point)
Next, I added a new object, tagged the new bone to it and created an anchor...this new object set was not attached to the main model skeleton whatsoever but sat at the y=0 placement. I animated it to follow the the rest of the skeleton and tested it in game. This corrected the landshark, and the enemy moved forward during the animation but still reset to its 0 point once animation completed.
So I guess what this means is if you have an object not joined to the rest of the model it breaks its ability to move forward for sure, hence why my original skeleton would not advance. So that mystery is definitely solved...(I know for sure youve already addressed that but I just wanted to mention unlinked objects are a nono for everyone that may not have caught it earlier in the posts).
The interesting thing is I would assume since this singular object was on the floor and x2mdl generated a model for SOM that allowed it to walk above that Holy Diver's program must be simply setting the lowest object's control point to Y=0 by default, so the question is, can he make it so the control point stays where it should in the model or can we find a way to put a dummy object at Y=0 without breaking the model's ability to move forward.
I will email him this post since his site is down along with the attached .x files - one with the object at the feet and one without so he can see the difference.
Once again, thanks john for putting that skeleton together, makes me feel alot better to know why the one i made wasnt working.
I would like to ask you something though, if I recall skimming Holy Diver's forum you mentioned there was a way to move bones individually during an animation so I could accomplish something like the falling apart death animation. Can you let me know how that is done, I am ready to make his dying animation :)
