I think some of these have been covered before, but I can't find the topics(thank you so much Mix) and I forget some[all] of the details, so I'm asking a few of these again, and some new questions I have all in one topic. Hopefully this forum will keep it's database for more than a year so I can reference this in the future if I need to. These aren't an immediate concern(I know elfprince is currently busy so I don't expect a quick response), I just wanted to get these down before I went to bed.

1. What's the order for the forward-backward bending animation(where do I start it, where do I go from there, where do I end it)?

2. What's the order for the look side to side animation(the head rotate thing)?

3. How do I make a mesh disappear in an animation(I've read it involves setting triggers in the dts plus exporter, I just don't know what exactly I put there)?

4. How do I set the triggers for leaving footprints in the dts plus converter?

If I think of any more questions I'll add them to this post. Thanks in advance.

uhhhh, my database goes back right till you compare TBM to Futurama. The recent pages doesn't but.

That doesn't really answer his question; please try to stay on-topic.

"Hopefully this forum will keep it's database for more than a year so I can reference this in the future if I need to."

I'm not entirely sure for either of these, but at this point, assuming you are modeling for FreeBuild, do whatever pleases you, and looks good in engine. I can send you my dragon ms3d if you want to see how to do things like set keyframes for a given joint. My current plan is for the Freebuild character model to be composed entirely of LDraw pieces attached to a skeleton, so the most important thing will be getting the proportions correct.


Check out crossbow.ms3d in my castlepack.zip (specifically the firing animation and the arrow mesh) You have to do things like "animate visibility" for a given mesh in the exporter.



Do you have a copy of the pdf document detailing TGE nodes for milkshape? That might be the most helpful to you.

Just to be forewarned though, beginning with the next (most likely) engine version I commit to svn, a lot of things will be different, and I may not even support .dts initially. Instead we should have support for any format that the OpenSceneGraph supports.

I already know how to set the keyframes and everything, but thanks for the support. What I really need is that forward/backward bending animation the minifig(and any torque player model in general) uses to look up and down.
I'm not modeling for Freebuild at the moment, but for my own project, using yesterday's Freebuild engine. It's not as important for what I'm doing right now, but at some point I'd like a fully functional player model, which would include animations for bending at the waist to aim up and down. I believe you already answered that one in an old topic on mix-networks, but I can't find the topic, as Mix took the forums down like 3 times before finally giving up.

On the other hand, I do have a correctly proportioned minifig skeleton with place-holder meshes if you want it. There's no animations, and it's in a default "arms outstretched" position for easier manipulation, but if you want to play with it: http://www.mediafire.com/?47hkv6ulwqgan9x
I have no idea if the hand nodes are oriented correctly for holding weapons, but it shouldn't be hard to fix through trial-and-error. I also haven't attached the bones to the meshes yet, but you didn't want the placeholders anyway.

@Lucas, if you do still have the old topic relating to player model animations(specifically, looking up and down) that would definitely answer my question, though I could swear it was on an older build of the forums...

You don't know anyone with 3ds max do you? I have a couple of Torque example player models in .max format, but I could also dig around on the forums for something similar in a milkshape friendly format.

I have a Milkshape version of the Orc skeleton I've experimented with in the past(it comes with the dts plus! exporter), and last night I finished rigging a human male skeleton to some placeholder parts for animation tests. It's that looking up and down animation that I need to finish it.

ah, okay. I would think you could implement your own for that? But I guess I should look at the engine code and see if there's anything specific it is expecting.