More Realistic First Person

ANOTHER MJAOR UPDATE!!
This is yet another update and even MORE unsettling but realistic then other major update! This one will cause your camera to rotate with your head! In other words, walking is hard as hell, jumping throws your view everywhere, looking down is a pain in the butt and even walking can be a challenge, unless your model is configured properly in animations!!

Proceede and your own risk with this one!

In player.cc around line 3050, the functions

Player::getEyeTransform(MatrixF* mat)

and

Player::getRenderEyeTransform(MatrixF* mat)

Find the line that says

mat->mul(getRenderTransform(), pmat);

And change it to

mat->mul(getRenderTransform(), mShapeInstance->mNodeTransforms[mDataBlock->eyeNode]);

END OF UPDATE


MAJOR UPDATE!!
I completely forgot to add this before, and I feel rather ashamed. This was intended to be a very large part of this resource. The current code sets your camera and arm animations properly, but not your muzzle point for the basic animations.

WARING!
You may not want to do the following. When you run and shoot, your gun will point somewhere totally different unless you set correctMuzzleVector to true in the gun image settings.

in Player.cc around line 2050 in setActionThread, find "mActionAnimation.firstPerson" and "mActionAnimation.animateOnServer" and set them both to true

End of Update.



After a bit of playing the starter.fps demo, I began to get tired of the armless weapon floating in air and the lack of your own body showing, so I changed a simple variable that set it to draw your body. However this blocks out animation from your arms while in first person, so as you run they are totally rigid, along with your camera. I decided to take it even further and fix this too.

This is overall very basic and can be done in about a minute.

The engine changes all take place in player.cc, all around the same spot too.

The first is somewhere around line 3100, although yours may be quite different as my player.cc is modified a bit.

The first function to change is getMuzzleTransform, there is a small if statement we need to knock out.

if (mActionAnimation.action < PlayerData::NumTableActionAnims) 
   {
      MatrixF xmat;
      xmat.set(EulerF(mHead.x, 0, 0));
      mat->mul(getTransform(),xmat);
      F32 *sp = nmat,*dp = *mat;
      dp[3] = sp[3]; dp[7] = sp[7]; dp[11] = sp[11];
   }
   else
    *mat = nmat;

Simply take out the if and its block of code and the else so all you have left there is

*mat = nmat;

Scroll down a bit and you'll see the exact same thing in getRenderMuzzleTransform, and do it there. Then further down you see getMuzzlePointAI. I'm not sure when or where this function is done, but I changed it too just to be sure because these changes will make your weapon aim considerably differently.

Normally that would make it so only on certain animations would your muzzle point change with the animation but those changes there make it so it will always move with your animation.

This next part sets it to play all the movements while in first person. Normally your arms would be totally rigid, you could only see your legs move as you walk, but in third person you see your arms shifting all over the place. This makes it so you now see them go all over while in first person.

Around line 2300 in the function Player::updateAnimation, change

if (getControllingClient()) 
      {
         updateAnimationTree(isFirstPerson());
         mShapeInstance->animate();
      }
      else 
      {
         updateAnimationTree(false);
      }

by simply removing the if and its block so you only have

updateAnimationTree(false);

left over. Your whole body now moves in first person.

Thats it for engine. Next step is 2 minor script changes.

Open player.cs and find in the PlayerBody datablock

renderFirstPerson = true;

And set it to true. Then open crossbow.cs and find

eyeOffset = "0.1 0.4 -0.6";

and get rid of that. Save it all and compile and you should be good to go!

You may notice there are some minor flaws here and there with the Orc model, such as your camera peeking through it. Also you'll notice that as you stand in one spot, your crossbow no longer shoots to the middle of your view anymore, its a bit off to the side. Things like this would have to be fixed in your player's animation settings because thats where its all dependant on now.

Anyhow, have fun! I personally love this change and I think it adds a much more natural feel.