Ok, the thing that caught me out was ActorX and the setup of my scene file.
Because I had the gun and arm in the same scene from animating, ActorX was counting the bones of both hierachys thinking they were one. Even though I only selected the arm or the gun, ActorX was saving everything. This caused massive issues later on, like the gun not showing at all in first person or the arms sometimes popping out in first person view dangling in front of the camera.
To fix that, I saved the arms as one scene and the gun as another. It means setting up ActorX twice and typing the same names and frame ranges for each scene but it fixed all the problems I had yesterday.
ps. Cheers all!
Original Post:
Every tutorial I've found on the subject is for UDK, which assumes I'm making everything from scratch. Believe me, I've spent the last two days buried in tutorials googling a dozen times an hour trying to figure this out. I need something for UT3 but there doesn't seem to be anything.
Where I'm coming stuck:
1. I cannot simply export UT3 arm meshes from the game and put them into my custom weapon scene. Cooked packages with arm meshes don't allow export so what am I meant to do?
2. There are some UDK sample meshes of a Krall, male and female human mesh which I can open in Max. But they are facing the y axis, not x, and I don't know if they are in the right place or are to the right scale. If I delete the rest of the character and only keep the arms, are the arms going to be in the right place for UT3 or do I have to move them?
Worst case, I guess I can try and make my own arm mesh but I really just wanted to plug into the existing ones.
-- Edited by Winter Dragon on Tuesday 7th of August 2012 10:33:23 AM
^^ This Request/ Problem is exactly the same as what i have been trying to talk about since i joined. :)
- Weapon animation showing the arms on my "Tournament_Chainsaw". = nightmare.
- I really would appreciate a good place to communicate, the forums can become a bit messy, and it is easy to misundertsand people - You are welcome to add me on Skype, i think it would be easier.
As for addressing your issues:
Spoiler
- there is things you can do; or i can do for you .
- I have the arms mesh with one of my weapons.
- You can use UModelto export the files your need.
- the udn/ udk forums has a file you can use, but i am unable to find it atm, i do however have it on my Harddrive.
It is my understanding that there is a seperate weapon arm mesh available. not the ut3 character that comes with a a rocket launcher aswel.
- in reality; it makes no difference where you position the mesh, or animation, becuase you can adjust this position with code or via the PHAT/ & Physics assets editor. [rotation yaw pitch/ location]
- HOWEVER, it is generally advised you use the arm exported in the correct position [makes life easier]
- i cannot clearly illustrate how much i really want to be able to do this, or work with someone who also wishes to obtain this goal.
- i know someone who can help with this, but out relationship is a bit "heated/ confrontational", nevertheless i shall tyr to obtain all i can for you.
Peace
Edit:
- It is difficult to know which weapon arms anim you want without knowing what weapon you are making.
- You can export [w/ UModel] e.g.FlakCannon and import in 3ds max; this will give you the arm Bones, like i said i have these files, but its easy to do and i never did get mien working like i wanted.
-- Edited by TKBS on Saturday 4th of August 2012 03:36:57 PM
-- Edited by TKBS on Friday 5th of March 2021 11:26:55 AM
Ok, I'll have a crack at this again tomorrow. It's 3:19am and I've spent 9 hours tonight trying to get this to work. Thanks everyone, it might work next time and if it does, I'll gladly pass on what I know.
@TKBS - if you have a scene with the arm mesh set up for export, could I have a look at it? I put together a real crude arm mesh tonight, rigged it with 3 bones and set up my animations. I exported the arm and gun as separate PSKs and PSAs but when I try to bring in the gun's animation, the gun disappears from the hand.
Also every time I open a PSK I've imported it forgets the animset I made for it. I've saved the package and my animset appears in the dropdown list under the anim tab, but it picks the first one in the list every time "Orbs" something, one of the UT3 ones.
ps. If you're referring to the UDN Bones_Arms scene, I can't open it, I get an error about ColladaMax.dle missing two dlls. Geodav says the UDN rig is a real pain to set up and use properly too, so it's unlikely I'll get to use it.
-- Edited by Winter Dragon on Saturday 4th of August 2012 05:06:01 PM
umodel has allowed me to get the arms and enforcer into a scene so I can look at how it's all set up.
All I'm trying to figure out now is where the weapon socket is for the arm mesh, none of the arms I've imported seem to have one.
Edit: Ahh, ok. The socket appears to be coming in with the gun, not the arms. So if they're in the same scene I guess I just have to link the bone to the arm instead of the pistol. (Senior moment.)
Edit2: Or not... (I've no idea. I'll keep messing around and see if I can't figure this out.)
-- Edited by Winter Dragon on Sunday 5th of August 2012 01:47:16 AM
-- Edited by Winter Dragon on Sunday 5th of August 2012 01:52:46 AM
when I try to bring in the gun's animation, the gun disappears from the hand.
^^ sounds exactly like something that annoyed me for hours..
1. make sure you config settings have HAND_RIGHT
^^ you would not believe how long i was testing my weapons with HAND_Hidden, i was going mad trying to understand why my hands and weapons were invisible... LOL so check that
2. most likely the gun is being rendered on a position offscreen;
- make sure you have a 3P mesh and a 1P mesh; then it might need some tweaks to its position.
- i would suggest open the weapon 1P; in editor and check which way your Axis is facing for that weapon; try to position it simialr to e.g. shockrifle_3P;
- moving this location/ position will help you get the weapon in frame.
* a quick tip;
- in your "MYWEAPON_Attachment" clas; change the scale of the weapon; to make it more visible.
Scale=5.75
^^ the bigger it is the easier it is to find :)
- on Monday i get my GPU back and i will be able to boot up my PC and give you as much help and any files that i can
I have the first person arms now working with my custom weapon, but it's not a complete victory yet as I haven't made my own custom animations for the arm or gun. I'm just using the enforcer ones with my mesh substituted in. Feign death shows an enforcer in the hand instead of my weapon, so I'll also try and fix that next.
Edit: Fixed the 3rd person stuff, I missed the attachment class earlier so that's fine.
-- Edited by Winter Dragon on Sunday 5th of August 2012 02:07:19 PM