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How to properly torture your Orc!

Name:	Jeremy Alessi
Date Posted:	Jun 06, 2006
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Now perhaps it's just me but programming dynamic mesh deformation in Torque seems to be a lot more complex than it should be. In this screen you can see that obviously some monster has grabbed my Orc's hand twisted it backwards and made the poor guy step on it for good measure. I'm sure if we could see his face he'd be crying and have a fat lip. Oh wait a minute no ... no ... that's me crying with a fat lip! Afterall there's no cry animation for the Orc ... so he wouldn't be capable of such a feat!

I'm not sure if this counts as progress or not. On one hand I am twisting the Orc's arm dynamically, but on the other hand ... yeah ok didn't think I needed to explain. Anyone who's got the inside scoop on some dynamic mesh deformation that works with Torque I could use your help!

OK, rant done!

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Brian Richardson (Jun 06, 2006 at 22:16 GMT)

If you haven't looked yet, the first example to look at is Paul Dana's turret resource. For more complex models, you have to take the starting orientation of the node in to consideration before animating. I think its mDefaultNodeRotation or something like that. Then you can use all of the cool QuatF and AngAxisF classes to do your animation.

Sorry this is so vague and dim, I've done this type of thing a while ago and don't remember the details. I'll try to post more tonight, if I don't, ping me and I'll respond with some code snippets or something.

James Urquhart (Jun 06, 2006 at 22:23 GMT)

Reminds me of early versions of the blender exporter :)

From what i recall, there should be a set of matrices calculated for each of the nodes in the shape, calculated each frame (from the root pose and the sequence keyframes in the dts). For skinned meshes, there is an additional matrix per node which supposedly transforms the vertices into node space (NOTE: for some reason this is unneccesarily duplicated per skinned mesh, rather than being global).

Y'know, i seem to remember there was that resource which added morph targets to the DTS format - perhaps that will be of use to you?

Jameson Bennett (Jun 06, 2006 at 23:15 GMT)

Here is the resource James referred to:
http://www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&q...

Are you trying to deform using verts or the nodes(bones)?

Jeremy Alessi (Jun 06, 2006 at 23:48 GMT)

Yeah, I looked at both resources and I'll have to consider the morph resource a bit more.

What I'm trying to do is control the bones (thinking the mesh would move with them properly). In my past experience it has just been a matter of grabbing the bone out of the model and manipulating it. Not that it's totally different in Torque but of course the animation system is somehow getting in the way ... I think.

Jeremy Alessi (Jun 07, 2006 at 00:34 GMT)

OK, well it's not the code I'm implemented ... it's where I've implemented it. If I take my code and put it in the Player::renderMountedImage function then it looks fine and I can control things. Either the network or the animation system is messing with things and I have to figure out how to organize it. The other thing is now the weapon doesn't shoot where it should although another routine I hacked together for a laser sight also renders perfectly fine.

Pisal Setthawong (Jun 07, 2006 at 06:26 GMT)

LOL, reminded me when I tried to export model from my modeling software and used the wrong options, and the model ended up funny like that :P

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