Weapon Animation (Multi Object vs. MD2)
Posted: Thu Dec 21, 2006 11:03 am
Hi all
Yesterday, I started one really ambitious weapon animation project: the idea is to have a multi barrel gun with independent animation for each barrel. To to the this, those barrel will have a telescopic retraction as a recoil reaction (i.e the barrel composes of multi parts).
The Idea:
At firing a barrel retracts, and it takes a *grand cycle* to return to the starting position. But the the other barrels will fire after a *minor cycle*. I probably easier to understand with numbers. And I am doing the easy example..
3 barrel gun
minor cycle .5 (sec) --> grand cycle 3 * .5 = 1.5
retraction time .5, expansion time 1.0
Thus far I've been using a subdivided model.
Using the animation3D class, I bumped into some problems, as thus far only one shooting animation has been defined, and I need at least 2 animation types (one for each part of the barrel). So far the animation does not understand superposing the same animation done differently on 2 model parts...
Using a pure MD2 animation is out of question, As firing just one barrel (while the animation is basically "continuous" fire), imposes already a special case, two barrel should be manageable. Or looking at the larger picture, with n barrel, the animation of a n-1 salvo is easy, but anything below gets very messy. And before I forget it, the entire problem is cyclic. The case differentiation will take some n^2 cases with n barrels...
My question now is, is there an *easy* way to create an hybrid model animation. using md2 animation for the barrels themselves, and a3D to combine the entire thing...
cheers
nico
Yesterday, I started one really ambitious weapon animation project: the idea is to have a multi barrel gun with independent animation for each barrel. To to the this, those barrel will have a telescopic retraction as a recoil reaction (i.e the barrel composes of multi parts).
The Idea:
At firing a barrel retracts, and it takes a *grand cycle* to return to the starting position. But the the other barrels will fire after a *minor cycle*. I probably easier to understand with numbers. And I am doing the easy example..
3 barrel gun
minor cycle .5 (sec) --> grand cycle 3 * .5 = 1.5
retraction time .5, expansion time 1.0
Thus far I've been using a subdivided model.
Using the animation3D class, I bumped into some problems, as thus far only one shooting animation has been defined, and I need at least 2 animation types (one for each part of the barrel). So far the animation does not understand superposing the same animation done differently on 2 model parts...
Using a pure MD2 animation is out of question, As firing just one barrel (while the animation is basically "continuous" fire), imposes already a special case, two barrel should be manageable. Or looking at the larger picture, with n barrel, the animation of a n-1 salvo is easy, but anything below gets very messy. And before I forget it, the entire problem is cyclic. The case differentiation will take some n^2 cases with n barrels...
My question now is, is there an *easy* way to create an hybrid model animation. using md2 animation for the barrels themselves, and a3D to combine the entire thing...
cheers
nico