we are having troubles with transferring custom made bones from 3DS Max into the game. For some reason these bones / bips are not showing at all in Viewer / ingame.
Is there a specific action that needs to be done apart from rigging these bones, placing Export Object, saving it as a .max file and building .max file in Asset Manager into .msh?
If so then we could really use some advice because I feel like we are very close to making it work but missing this one last thing.
There shouldn’t be any special steps to using max bones vs imported bones, the only thing I could say without more info is to make sure your custom bones are part of the rig’s hierarchy and that they are added to the skin modifiers bone list.
If you’re still having trouble, could you post a screenshot of your hierarchy and bone list?
Adding bones to the skin modifiers bone list was the step that was missing. Custom bones are now showing properly in Viewer so many thanks for that.
However, now we have another problem with the imported model being stuck in place while playing walk animation and not actually moving.
The model was moving before when we didn’t have Bone_root and Target_CTRL skinned (= they weren’t build in .msh) so I don’t think the problem is in the animation itself.
So is the model stuck in place in max or in the viewer? This is a dumb question, but did you toggle the walk offset option in the viewer (F3)?
If so, the offset is calculated by how far the Target_CTRL node moves in the max scene over the duration of the animation, so make sure that is how the character is being offset in the animation file. If something else, like the root bone is controlling the offset, transfer that over to Target_CTRL and that should hopefully help. Make sure you set the curves to flat in the curves editor otherwise you’ll rubber banding in the run/walk cycle.
The model was stuck in place ingame but the reason for that was indeed having no offset in the walk animation. Once I made the offset then it worked.
As always… some other issues occurred after that but we will try to fix them on our own so I don’t take more of your time than necessary. However if we come to a point where we have no idea on how to proceed further then I would ask here again if that’s ok with you.
So thank you again and hopefully we will have more luck trying to figure things out from now on.
No problem, glad it helped! “There’s always something” or “nothing is ever easy” are probably great ways to describe working with our tools. Definitely let me know if you guys get stuck, I don’t mind helping out if I can!
Is there anything else that needs to be done in order for mesh to attack / cast spells other than attaching helpers to corresponding bones (SpecialHit01, …04, Target, L Hand, R Hand and FX ones)?
Our custom mesh is still not dealing any melee dmg / casting spells after adding these helpers so I assume there is more to be done than having helpers attached to bones.
Edit: I should also add that animations for this mesh are working correctly ingame.
What exactly is responsible for player character’s weapon to show during cast / attack animation? In other words: what would need to be done for MH / OH to show during spell cast animation?
Does your monster’s attack animations have .aif files associated with them? You’ll need the “RightHandHit” or “LeftHandHit” callbacks in there. If you do not have any .aif files, you can just make a text file and add the ‘.aif’ extention to the end and then add it to the animation asset in the AM.
Here’s a sample from a monster’s attack .aif that has a lefthand and righthand hit:
CallbackPoint
{
name = "SwipeRight"
frame = 7
}
CallbackPoint
{
name = "RightHandHit"
frame = 11
}
CallbackPoint
{
name = "SwipeLeft"
frame = 16
}
CallbackPoint
{
name = "LeftHandHit"
frame = 18
}
As for your other question, I think this is probably what you’re looking for (also in the .aif):
CallbackPoint
{
name = "HideRightHand"
frame = 0
}
CallbackPoint
{
name = "ShowRightHand"
frame = 39
}
I should also mention that you will need to equip the weapons in the monster’s dbr under “Initial Equipment > Right Hand” as well if you haven’t already.
