animation problems

    Hey,

    When all else fails I turn to you bright young minds of mapcore!

    I've been trying to animate a subtle movement on flags since yesterday, but nothing seems to work...

    In 3DSmax I added a 4 bone setup linked it to the flag mesh, then added the skin modifier where I add

    the 4 bones to the flag. When I do a quick test animation to see how it works in source it is rigid and

    the movement I have in 3DSmax is gone. Anyone know why this is happening?

    I made a quick video of it: http://www.wesleytack.com/upload/clip0001.avi

    animations have to be exported to a separate smd if i remember correctly are you doing that ?

    also one of your 3 flags in the model viewer does seam to move whats the difference between the one on the left and the 2 on the right !

    yea the exports are correctly I can do rotation animations and such, but when I want to animate vertexes for the flags the flag plane stays rigid in the hl2mv, in max it moves fluently. In the video the 1st part is max (fluent) and the second part is hl2mv (rigid) like a swing on a clock. I just did 1 flag in this video to test, there are 5, the other ones aren't moving yet because I didn't wanna animate them until I know what's up with the rigid animation.

    I created a bone and linked the flag mesh to 1 bone, I think in Source it uses only 1 of the 4 bones (the one I linked the mesh to). Perhaps I don't need to link it at all to the bone as I did with my previous "simple" rotation animations, I'll try that when I get home.

    Quote from WesleyTack

    I created a bone and linked the flag mesh to 1 bone, I think in Source it uses only 1 of the 4 bones (the one I linked the mesh to). Perhaps I don't need to link it at all to the bone as I did with my previous "simple" rotation animations, I'll try that when I get home.

    Hum, not sure if I totaly understand... But, you have to use the "Skin" modifier in Max and assign all bones in the options. Also, you must assign for each vertice what bone is used.

    I hope I understood your question ^^

    yea I did use skin, but in the _reference.max (before animation) I linked the meshes to a bone, I think I don't need to do this though, gonna try it without the link as soon as I get home, should know more within the next 2 hours, I'll let you know

    Quote from WesleyTack

    yea I did use skin, but in the _reference.max (before animation) I linked the meshes to a bone, I think I don't need to do this though, gonna try it without the link as soon as I get home, should know more within the next 2 hours, I'll let you know

    Yep, it maybe cause the problem...

    Source don't recognize well links between bones and meshes. But you can make some path and link constraint with lines and non-mesh objects.

    Ok,

    So I did some more digging around and here's what I have atm... (still doesn't work as video will show).

    I need to link the mesh to the bone, without the link the animation doesn't work at all.

    Now, I have 4 bones, but I can only link to 1 of the 4 bones, and as the video will show the one bone that the mesh is linked

    to is the one that source uses to move the flag, when I animate the other 2 below they simply don't work in Source (last part of video).

    In the video I do 3 parts:

    part 1 I simply move the one bone that it's linked to and export (this works in source)

    part 2 I rotate only the top bone where it is linked to, this makes the flag swing in source like a pendulum (this too works)

    part 3 I move the other 2 bones which I need for a fluent motion of a flag moving (this doesn't work)

    So basically I can use only the linked bone and none of the others, which I'm sure is possible, what am I missing here?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wG2Zt240tko

    Quote from WesleyTack

    Have you ever made an animated props in Source ?

    In my opinion, you don't need to link anything but only bones with each others...

    1 - make your 3 bones linked.

    2 - apply skin modifier to mesh, select your 3 bones.

    3 - moves what you want, Source allow rotation and moving, but no scaling (I saw this a few weeks ago).

    If you want, I can show you with Team Viewer, I'm on Steam as Em'.

    PS : because I already did that on a fish model.

    The bones are linked, but when I don't link it to the mesh it stays rigid in game as well (as far as I remember, I'll retest this tomorrow).

    Thanks for the help, I hope it will work tomorrow!

    Quote from WesleyTack

    The bones are linked, but when I don't link it to the mesh it stays rigid in game as well (as far as I remember, I'll retest this tomorrow).Thanks for the help, I hope it will work tomorrow!

    Why ?

    The skin modifier do all the work. You don't need to link mesh and bones !

    here is my model in 3dsmax :

    [Blocked Image: http://img11.hostingpics.net/pics/152583test_fish.gif] You can see that the animation works : 2 bones, like your flag.

    And here, my mdl in HLMV :

    http://%7boption%7d and yes, animation works too. The both bones influence each a part of the mesh.

    PS : sorry for my bad bad english ^^

    Thanks for the help everyone, I just got it to work, the not linking worked indeed!

    I tried it before but what I forgot the first time was to apply the skin modifiers in the _reference file first before doing the _idle...

    arg!

    thanks for the help!!! I got moving flags now.. yaaaay

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