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Heirarchy, nodes, etc for non-bipeds - how should it be set up?

by Adam deGrandis · in Artist Corner · 04/18/2004 (7:38 am) · 2 replies

Im trying to make an animal that isnt a biped. But Im not sure how the heirarchy and nodes and everything should be set up. My current set up is as follows. I have all my chains (4 leg chains, 2 mouth chains, a tail chain, and 2 gill chains) connected to a dummy called "MasterBone". All of this makes up the skin of the model, which is called recycler145. Now here is where it gets confusing for me. Also in the scene at this point is a dummy called "detail145" and the bounding box.

Here is where things fall apart for me. I thought that everything sans bounds would ahve to be a child to a master node or something like that. If I link recycler145 to anything, though, i get a message that says "skin found on linked node 'Recycler145' -- skin must be unlinked". So if I unlink the Recycler then i get "Assertion failed on skinned object". This isnt a player character, its just a random beast that walks around the level. I just need it up for a tech demo of what Im doing.

So what exactly do i need (as far as dummys or anything) and in what order so I can make this thing export? Im so very confused.
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Torque 3D Owner Adam deGrandis
Adam deGrandis

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I'm an veteran game artist, teacher, and all around nice guy. Check out my portfolio at adamdegrandis.com.

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    Associate Logan Foster
    perPixel Studios
    #1
    04/18/2004 (9:22 am)
    Any object with a skin modifier must be unlinked from the DTS Hierarchy tree. This will result in you having two objects at the very root of your scene, your DTS Hierarchy start (in your case its called "MasterBone") and your mesh with the skin modifier (here called "Recycler145").

    All of your detail and collision markers (ie. detail145 or col-1) should be linked to "MasterBone" in your scene. Other nodes such as 'eye', 'cam', 'mount', 'ski', etc. need to be linked to the appropriate bone on your models (as seen in numerous other character and model examples).

    In regards to your assertation error. Typically this means that there is something wrong with the data. If it keeps bitching at you the first thing you could try to do is save the skin weight values out to a file (done through the Skin Modifier), delete the skin modifier, reapply it, and then load your saved skin weighting again. If that still doesn't fix things, I would remove the skin modifier (save out the skin weight information of course) and run an STL Check modifier on your model and make certain that there are no errors or problems, if you find problems fix them on your model.

    Logan

    Torque 3D Owner Adam deGrandis
    Adam deGrandis
    #2
    04/18/2004 (9:32 am)
    Wow, lots of great information... thanks for the reply. :)