Rigging gun magazine to reload

waronmars

Hi guys,
I have a pretty standard automatic rifle that I need to rig. The magazine just needs to come out in the characters hand, and return to it's position in the gun. I know for UDK I need to have the bones parented to the guns root bone, but this doesn't allow the magazine to move freely. I can get the magazine to move the way I want if the bone is separate from the gun heirarchy, but not if it is parented properly. Does anyone know how to handle this porperly? Should I just make the magazine a completely separate object, with a separate root bone, and combine it with the gun in the engine?

Thanks

sprunghunt

usually it's just done with a bone on the gun. However if you're in UDK it'll probably help if you turn on position on the animations. UDK does not animate position by default.

Vailias

You'll want to have the mag bone parented to the gun body bone so it moves properly in all your other anims. For the reload anim you'll use a parent constraint for the mag bone to the palm. In maya this has a keyable aspect, so you switch the constraint on when the hand comes up and off when it releases. Just as easily you can actually have two parent constraints, one to the hand, the other to the gun, and have the bone free floating, or parented to the hierarchy of the overall system. Just switching which constraint is on as needed during the anims..

Dave-Mastor

In our project, we just have the magazine skinned to a dummy/node (in 3ds max) which is then linked to the root bone. The dummy allows the magazine to move independently anywhere in the scene, but still move with the gun.

As long as animation positions are on in the UDK, it works fine. We also use the technique to do bullets in the magazine for a reload that removes a partially full magazine. We just have the bullets skinned to a dummy, which is linked to the magazine, which is in turn liked with the gun.