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Skeletal Animation

by Chris Traill · in Torque Game Engine · 12/04/2002 (6:59 am) · 4 replies

I'm pretty sure I've confused myself totally on this one because I'm not really that up with my animation phrases, please bear with me though before you start laughing :)

I have a modeller friend who has made me a tank model for the simple game I'm trying to make as a way of learning more about Torque. Lovely model it is, and the plan is that the tank isn't actually going to move anywhere, but the turret will be able to turn around and shoot. The thing thats confusing me is that I was sure skeletal animation would be just having the body & the turret connected with bones and I would be able to move the turret around through scripts while the body would remain static.

Am I heading down the wrong path with this reasoning? Would it just be a lot easier to get him to animate the turret rotating using dsq files? Any advice for a new guy around here like fatal flaws in my idea and handy hints as to where I should be concentrating?

Thanks guys :)
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Torque Owner Matthew Jones
#1
12/04/2002 (9:33 am)
I am not totally up to speed myself, but I am pretty sure that modeling the tank and using animations is probably the way to go. I don't think you would need DSQ files for the limited number of animations required.(Not sure though) but you probably could just animate them and use the DTS animation helper. The helpers would be named "turret"right left, and Barrel up and down, If they apply. You could call those animations from script real easy. The tank would use more of a weapons type script than anything.And since the turret and barrle could be seperate part it could call both scripts at the same time.
For more detailed help on the DTS helpers you could post up on the "modelling" forum maybe someone else will know if this is accurrate or not but thats how I think would be the best to go about it. You can also read sbout them in the DTS doc's.
I have used the same approach to a few weapons and it has worked out fine for me.

Hope that helps
Matt

Torque Owner Chris Traill
#2
12/04/2002 (11:34 am)
Thanks for the reply Matthew, most of what you're saying makes sense to me so thats a big plus :)

I didn't think of posting up in the modelling forums, damn my tired brain, but I think that the pointers you've given me should be some good help :)

Thanks again

Associate Anthony Rosenbaum
#3
12/04/2002 (11:41 am)
From my understanding, the Tanks for Torque, as a seperate vehicle class, would require a Turret Class to be mounted on one of the nodes. Unfortunetly right now no, turrent code has been released. Several other members including myself have it on the todo list. Also a thread sequence would have to be made so that the tank treads would conform to the terrain. T2 used the hover code for their tanks, but they still had to mount a turret on it.

Torque Owner Matthew Jones
#4
12/04/2002 (1:21 pm)
*Anthony
All that is true but he is not trying to be that specific about The tank, All he wants is control over the turret and barrel and I am pretty sure you could modify a weapons script to handle that. It would be like a weapon in an FPS with a few extra functions.

Matt