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Rotating or Scaling a Billboard object

by Quest Johnny · in Torque Game Engine · 12/17/2005 (11:44 am) · 3 replies

Has anyone had any success with a billboard object which rotated, or scaled in its animation? I have a billboard mesh which has two objects in it. The 2ndary object I would like to rotate (perpendicular to a line pointing to the user), or scale.

I have tried both. The rotation show a bit of movement, but it does not rotate, and the scale does nothing. Are these animations disabled in billboards, or do I have to do something particular to make them work.

I know that in Tribes, it was possible to have scaled billboard animations because some objects had a "glow" effect that was done with a billboard.

Thanks for any help
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Associate Ben Garney
#1
12/17/2005 (12:08 pm)
Seems to me that if you have the thing you want to rotate as a secondary node under the billboard node, then you're set. You'd have to debug with the showtool to make sure the node hierarchy was right.

Torque Owner Quest Johnny
#2
12/20/2005 (7:25 pm)
Ah, I finally got this workng - after a fashion. For those who come after me:

It seems that billboard objects cannot change orientation or scale - they're stuck, so what I did was this: The part that doesn't need to change I made into a billboard object, and I made a child object that was NOT a billboard, which rotated in such a way as to .. usually.. fit the billboard..

Basically, I had to alter the design of the piece to fit with that limitation. The childing tho, is relevant. It doesn't seem to work otherwise. It takes a few tries, but it will work.

Associate Ben Garney
#3
12/20/2005 (8:29 pm)
Thank you so much for the follow up, Andrew.