Ships with joints/rotational parts.
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My goal here is to make a ship from a game called Colony Wars(The T-1 Typhoon), for those who are not familiar with the game the typhoon had its engines mounted at the edge of its wings and when it went to turn it would rotate one of the engines backwards allowing it to spin on a dime basically. It was a ridiculously agile craft to say the least.
I have alot of experience in gmax however I would like to know if having moving joints on a ship is at all possible before I make an attempt since I have little experience with milkshape and/or moving objects.
Image of the typhoon taken using my phone directly off my television with the game, sorry for the low quality. -
It is possible, but the options are quite limited currently. The mesh animations are tied to state changes. The ones available are:
Docking -only on the dock/ station end of things as far as I’ve found
Constant loop -animation runs without end ex; turbines, radars, etc
Run Once constants -usually only run when un-docking, perhaps when closing within a specific distance of the object as well -must include Sc_end anim node
Jettison Cargo -bay doors and such on ships, initiated with keyboard command
Fire weapon -triggered at each keyboard initiated weapon fireAll these are done via scripts included in the model’s .cmp file, so the only thing relevant in Milkshape or whatever modeling program, is how you group the meshes and perhaps how each piece is positioned relative to 0,0,0 origin. Most of the other stuff are done with UTF editor and / or a hex editor. There are a couple topics here on the board that go a bit more in-depth.
But there is no trigger for turning to initiate an animation, unfortunately. I know we’d all like to see a larger variety of triggers like cruise, or delayed weapon fire, landing sequences, docking anims on the ship itself, player initiated animations, etc, etc.
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I had hoped there would be some trigger I could use for speed or turning. It was probably a bit ambitious of me to begin with since I have mainly done static objects.
I guess using the docking state change I could get them to rotate for some kind of vertical take off when your leaving a planet or dock if i’m understanding your statement about the animations but that would take more work then its worth at this point.
Anyway how, Thanks for the reply and info ;D
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I don’t remember if it was just an idea or something that was actually implemented into a mod…
Anyways it was something about adding the animation to thrusters on a X-Wing so when you hit thrust the wings would fold out! I think something similar was suggested/used on engines too…
Maybe you could use this if it’s possible!? The wings on your ship could then turn and point backwards!?
