holding items
Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Beginners Area/holding items
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| hello everyone, I just signed up for the forums, and this is my first post. currently, i am working on creating an RPG, and i have managed to overcome most problems in my path but i cant figure this one out: how do you create a character mesh, that (depending on what weapon u equip) holds different things. the character mesh is moveing (and being animated) so how do i have the weapon move with his hand? like, if he runs his arm moves, and his sword has to stay in it... by the way, if i wasnt clear, im talking about 3d thanks |
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| you have to parent the weapon to the Hand bone of your mesh. |
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| It depends on what kind of mesh the character is. If it's skeletal animated (ie. a b3d file) then yeah what he said. If not, um, switch to skeletal animation with b3d file format. |
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| well, the the 3D mesh editing program im useing isn't so good, and the only B3d compatable file format i can save as is .X anyway, if i did manage a b3d file, how would i get blitz to recognize the hand bone and be abled to parent the weapon to it? sorry for all the questions... im really bad with the graphics side of programming :( JS |
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| You could use FindChild(parent_mesh, child_name$) to get a handle to the bone: mesh = LoadAnimMesh("something.b3d") bone = FindChild(mesh, "handbone") There is also GetChild, which requires an index. Then, assign this bone as a parent to the object: EntityParent pickobject, bone Finally, probably you should move it a bit using MoveEntity. If you don't know the name of the hand's bone, try this program to enlist all children: |
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| Something to bear in mind is that bones in a model loaded with Blitz3D are actually blitz3d pivot entities. I'd suggest experimenting with some of the free models available at http://www.psionic3d.co.uk/cgi-bin/imageFolio.cgi?direct=Free%20Stuff/3D%20Models . I think some of these models have issues with fustrum culling due to where the center is placed, so you may encounter some visibility issues with them. |
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| wow, that helps alot, thanks! one more thing (i hope), bill: u said that the bones in a model are actually B3D pivot points, so say that you have an anim of the mesh swinging a sword, will the sword change the direction its pointed (depending how the hand moves) in aswell, because, i thought if it was parented to the pivot point it would move with it, but not change direction ? thanks, JS |
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| The sword will rotate with the hand. If you parent one item to another item then the child item's position, rotation, and scale are all relative to the parent item. |
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| well, i finally got back to the computer with blitz3d installed on it, and i tryed out what u guys said...2 wierd things happened: 1. blitz3d will not recognize any .b3d files i have. it will load them fine, this command will not return any errors: ninja_mesh=LoadAnimMesh("ninja.b3d") however, if i try to do anything involving that mesh's handle (ninja_mesh) i will get a runtime error saying "entity does not exist" 2. the animate command is not working, when i try to use it, a runtime error occurs saying "illegal memory adress" i have not used any "loadanimseq" or "setanimseq" commands before it, i am just using the animation built into the mesh (and yes, i know the animation is there, because its the "mario" mesh from the castle demo, which btw, works fine with its animation, so its not blitz) could u tell me what im doing wrong here? JS |
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| Is the b3d file in the same directory as the main code file? If not you need to specify the exact place where it is. |
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| Are you sure the file is in the blitz b3d format? because there are other b3d formats. |
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| mindstorms: yeah, ive tryd it in the same directory, and ive also tryd specifying the exact file where it is. bram32: i got the b3d files that im using from the site that bill stanbrook mentioned, and also when i go to "loadanimmesh" under the command reference section, it says it can only use .3ds and .X, it says nothing about .b3d, is it supposed to? |
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| <<Loads a mesh from an .X, .3DS or .B3D file and returns a mesh handle. >> Have you downloaded the doc update ? It is in the account section There is another 3d format that is called b3d. http://bcchang.com/immersive/b3d.html To see if it is a blitzbasic b3d file, open it in notepad (or hexedit) and see if the first 4 characters are BB3D. If they are, you could try and use a 3d editor/viewer that imports b3d. Such a program might give a better feedback on loading the file. |
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| you can also just try out a Milkshape 3D free trial. Milkshape is actually quite powerful and can export skeletal animation to a .b3d file and can import several different files as well. |
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| ok, i just updated blitz3d (everything), and now everything is working fine! animation, .b3d files...its all fixed. thanks for all your help! JS |
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