Re: [Nel] multipart meshes, deforming, adding

[Andi 'Debug' Allen]

thanks  Hulud

 

it gives me plenty to chew on! :)

 

can you tell me also the status of implementing IK / HK chains

into export and animation. ( have to love those muscle flexing

animations ) ( picture a monters cracking knuckles and flexing before

he tears your head off and eats it LOL )

 

so for a hand bind to weapon we would have a bone in the palm of hand and bind to that

to attach a weapon and bones poking from spine and neck for

backpack / cloak etc and so on.

 

another question is setting an alpha value for an overall character

is there an easy way to set a character so its semi transparent

or does each material of each mesh need a color (255,255,255,0) set

on it or something?

 

is there some instruction on vertex deformation in nel? for instance

mouth eyes nose haveing an offset and deforming the vertex to

make appearences different.

 

for skin color of a mesh as another question altering the color

does this involve creating many shades of the texture and

pikcing one or can a color (tint) be applied to a texture or

material that will allow the white <> black or possibly green! :p

skin of a player character.

 

i know these questions are diverse but i feel they still belong to

deforming and adding of meshes so this thread is suitable.

 

 

 

 

    Andi 'Debug' Allen

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.12
GCS d--- s-: a-- C++++ US++ P++ L+ E--- W+++ N o-- K++ w++++
O---- M-- V-- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5++ X++ R-- tv+++ b++++ DI++ D++
G++ e* h++ r+++ y++++
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

Design Lead
Project Talaus Online
www.neverborn.net

----- Original Message -----

From: Cyril 'Hulud' Corvazier

To: Developer's list for the NeL platform

Sent: Friday, March 19, 2004 4:48 PM

Subject: Re: [Nel] multipart meshes, deforming, adding

Hi Andi,

 

In NeL, you can bind several meshes on the same skeleton.

 

Export some body shapes (upper_body00.shape, arms00.shape, head00.shape, legs00.shape etc..) create a skeleton instance, create an instance for each part of the body and bind them to the skeleton :

 

USkeleton *skel;

std::vector<UInstance*> instances;

... // Load skeleton and shapes

uint i;

for (i=0; i<instances.size(); i++)

{

    // Attach each shape to the skeleton

    skel->bindSkin( instances[i]);

}

 

If you want to deform the body, play with the bone's scale factor :

 

UBone *bone;

bone->setScale(CVector (0.75,0.75,0.75));

 

All your objets will be affected by the deformation.

 

If you want to change the general size of your character, change the scale of the skeleton :

 

USkeleton *skel;

skel->setScale(CVector (0.75,0.75,0.75));

 

All your objets will be affected by the deformation too.

 

If you have weapons, export them in seprated shapes (gun00.shape etc..) and stick them to a bone you have prepared in the skeleton. Here, my bone is called "right_hand_stick_box".

 

// Stick the current gun in the right hand

uint rightHandStickBox = skel->getBoneIdByName ("right_hand_stick_box");

skel->stickObject(gunInstance, rightHandStickBox);

 

To swap a body part, just detach the old instance from the skeleton and bind the new one.

 

skel->detachSkeletonSon (instanceToRemove);

skel->bindSkin (instanceToAdd);

 

To have perfect body part connection, the boundary vertices in the different part must have the same position and the same skinning weight. Also, we recommand that your different body part meshes use the same pivot point in 3dsmax.

 

Keep in mind you willl have better performances if you :

- minimize the number of shape used per character

- minimize the number of material used per shape

- minimize the number of bones used per shape

- minimize the number of vertices discontinuity (normal, UV and position discontinuity) into your mesh.

 

The other questions regarding CLOD and MRM will be answered by Lionel later.

 

I wish you a hacky weekend Andy :-)

 

Hld.

 

Heh,

 

thanks for your reply didn't touch on more than 1% of my questions or give any real

solutions and practices sounded cool though so ty

 

the main part of this questions where about mesh interfacing breaking up a mesh into

parts that is already bound to a skeleton then using mesh deformation or swap

in swap out to change them.

 

just after some step by step

some how to's

do's and don'ts

code samples

3ds advice for creating of them

process for building them

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