Mech Project: Transforming Arm - 3 weapon states.
Hey all. This thread is a new version of my previous thread since this is a new project aim now. The new aim is below.
Ok. This project has changed a bit now since last time i posted. The original aim is now not complex or needed enough for it to be considered useful for a thesis. However, the new aim still uses a mech character, but will be a much more focused project.
For the aim i intend to have a mech character with its two arms able to transform between 3 sets of weaponry:
A hand with some kind of palm attatchment (similar to ironman).
A large cannon.
A large rotating gun with 4 barrels.
For this i'm going to need to look into creating a custom rig as i was going to do with the previous project idea, however it will also need to use some kind of additional parts for the extra sections to animate when needed.
I havn't attempted something like this before, so i have two different ways i think i could tackle this:
Idea 1: have the 3 states of the arm (as low poly as possible) all present on the arm but hidden depending on which is being used, and when activated they simply animat out and swap with the currently active state.
Pros: no model swapping, as it's only one model.
cons: eats up resources as there are alot of hidden objects almost all the time.
requires multiple animations for one object: each gun firing, hands moving, plus each of the transformation animations.
Idea 2: have a seperate arm model for each state that has no custom animations EXCEPT for animations when the gun fires. have a 4th arm which has all three states at the same time, and which animates/cycles between the 3 states during the cycle animation. The way this would work is have the first state of the weapon on the character first, for example the hand state. The player switches to the cannon, the hand state is seemlessly replaced by the 3 in one model which then animates to the cannon. once the animation is complete, this model then seemlessly changes to the cannon only model and play continues.
Pros: less resources used most of the time with only the one gun present any one time when not transforming (no idden objects).
multiple arm models, meaning no need to share alot of animations on the same model (cannon only needs cannon firing + intergration with rest of body, 3in1 arm only needs the transform animation)
cons: will need to create a total of 9 arms. 1 arm for each weapon selection (hand, cannon, rotating gun) and then 1 3in1 arm for each transformation :
Hand -> Cannon
Hand -> Rotating gun
Cannon -> Hand
Cannon -> Rotating gun
Rotating gun -> Hand
Rotating gun -> Cannon
For starters i have my high poly mech character now complete with all three arm states.
I'll be needing some help from fellow modellers and scripters (kind of a novice at scripting) for unreal in order to get this working in game.
The coding idea offered by SpeCter still has uses i think in this new project so i'll be trying to build on that where i can.
Also, does anyone know where i can get any information on the transformers models in the transformer movie games? i'm pretty sure they use some kind of alternate model swap when transforming between the robot model and the car/vehicle model. Just can't seem to find anything on it.
Ok. This project has changed a bit now since last time i posted. The original aim is now not complex or needed enough for it to be considered useful for a thesis. However, the new aim still uses a mech character, but will be a much more focused project.
For the aim i intend to have a mech character with its two arms able to transform between 3 sets of weaponry:
A hand with some kind of palm attatchment (similar to ironman).
A large cannon.
A large rotating gun with 4 barrels.
For this i'm going to need to look into creating a custom rig as i was going to do with the previous project idea, however it will also need to use some kind of additional parts for the extra sections to animate when needed.
I havn't attempted something like this before, so i have two different ways i think i could tackle this:
Idea 1: have the 3 states of the arm (as low poly as possible) all present on the arm but hidden depending on which is being used, and when activated they simply animat out and swap with the currently active state.
Pros: no model swapping, as it's only one model.
cons: eats up resources as there are alot of hidden objects almost all the time.
requires multiple animations for one object: each gun firing, hands moving, plus each of the transformation animations.
Idea 2: have a seperate arm model for each state that has no custom animations EXCEPT for animations when the gun fires. have a 4th arm which has all three states at the same time, and which animates/cycles between the 3 states during the cycle animation. The way this would work is have the first state of the weapon on the character first, for example the hand state. The player switches to the cannon, the hand state is seemlessly replaced by the 3 in one model which then animates to the cannon. once the animation is complete, this model then seemlessly changes to the cannon only model and play continues.
Pros: less resources used most of the time with only the one gun present any one time when not transforming (no idden objects).
multiple arm models, meaning no need to share alot of animations on the same model (cannon only needs cannon firing + intergration with rest of body, 3in1 arm only needs the transform animation)
cons: will need to create a total of 9 arms. 1 arm for each weapon selection (hand, cannon, rotating gun) and then 1 3in1 arm for each transformation :
Hand -> Cannon
Hand -> Rotating gun
Cannon -> Hand
Cannon -> Rotating gun
Rotating gun -> Hand
Rotating gun -> Cannon
For starters i have my high poly mech character now complete with all three arm states.
I'll be needing some help from fellow modellers and scripters (kind of a novice at scripting) for unreal in order to get this working in game.
The coding idea offered by SpeCter still has uses i think in this new project so i'll be trying to build on that where i can.
Also, does anyone know where i can get any information on the transformers models in the transformer movie games? i'm pretty sure they use some kind of alternate model swap when transforming between the robot model and the car/vehicle model. Just can't seem to find anything on it.
Replies
With it all in one system and hidden at different points it just seems inefficient and heavy handed, but that would probably be the easiest way to handle it with as little programing as possible...
I have no idea what kind of game this is going into and even less knowledge about the code specifics behind a model swapping system but as far as generalized knowledge that seems to be how most games handle it and its a bit of overlap between programming and art.
Just about every game I can think of has some kind of model swap system, which is probably the most efficient way of handling this kind of thing. If that's how everyone does it then you should probably do it that way? It would kind of suck to have to explain it in interviews "I don't know how to do model swapping so I came up with this elaborate setup and complex rig to compensate for it". I guess it shows out of the box thinking and creativity in problem solving but then you have to wonder if you'll always take the long hard crazy road or will you accept that sometimes the wheel doesn't need to be reinvented and doing it the way its been done for years is sometimes best?
I'm favoring my 2nd idea of how to swap the parts in and out so that'll be what i think i'll be doing for it, and intergrate that with sockets. I.e. possibly have the arm end at the elbow joint, with the elbow joint being theoretically the fore arm for the rig. then, on the end of the fore arm, would be the socket and the entire fore arm model with the guns would be individual weapons.
Although this is a great way of doing it and something i hadn't at first considered, there is one small snag, i'll need to find a way of creating a "hand weapon" as in, make one of the weapon attachments (the whole fore arm models) as a hand and have it rigged and animate like a hand would. i supose this wouldn't prove too much of a leap as i'd just have to set it as a weapon and give it animations for what a hand would do. Now i havn't done any weapons in UT before, so i hope there isn't a limit on how many animations a weapon can have.
Thanks for the input so far though
I've also got several animations of the gun transformation, one of which succefully works in UDK.
However, i believe i've completely forgotten about scaling, and so the gun and the mech are massive.
My question now is,
a) can you scale the gun and character in UDK without affecting its animations or hieracrhy?
b) is there a way to save the animations in 3ds Max, then remove the IKs, rescale everything, and set it all up again wioth the saved animation?
c) would it be possible to save the animation from 3ds max as a PSA file, remove the animations in 3ds max, rescale, re-setup the IKs and bones with the same names and import it into UDK. Would the PSA still work properly now that the character's scale has changed, as long as the names are all the same?
here're the two weapons so far:
there are still a few untextured sections, but those will get filled in sooner or later. They share the same texture sheet 1024x1024 to minimise memory, but that's not really a concern with this project, just something i wanted to do to save time.
I'm also in the process of re-doing the main body of the mech. I want to get it done asap as it's not really much of a cocern again for the project, the weapons are. So hopefully i can get it finished not long after the christmas period. Most of the mech will stay similar to the original mesh i made, but for some reason i either pro-optimised it when making the low poly, or it got corrupted, not sure which >< so i'm re-making most parts, also to minimise any difficult sections, which currently are all over the place. Smoother flat areas will be better and won't neccessarily look worse.