Greetings. I have been googling, and gamedeving for awhile now and I can''t quite find what i''m looking for. What is that? I''m looking for an example, or a tutorial, or even a well written article on how to go about connecting things to models. How do you add a piece of clothing to a model? And have this removeable or addable ''in-game''. And if we think in a different direction, how woudl you REMOVE things? lets say I would like to have every limb and the head of my models "slice off"-able. How would I go about doign this? I assume it''s 2 leg models 2 arm models a torso and a head model, all ''attached'' to my skeleton? Or do they have their own bones which attach to attachment points on my toros skeleton? A tutorial or example of this would also be nice. The format doesn''t matter to me. I am not currently stuck with one. Actually a suggestion to a good format for these actions would be appriciated. If any clarification is needed just ask. I often have trouble explaining what I need. My Thanks. - Kahsm.

your probably looking for a physics engine.
check out tokamak, it has support for ''breakable'' objects

A physics engine eh?

And this this "breakage" functionality I assume then is difficult?

I was hopeing for some sort of instruction on ways of doing this. But is my answer going to be "use a third party?"

And i'm not just looking for code... Just the idea of how decapitation might work (Like Jedi Academy where you can slice off hands and arms but they still have their rag doll physics).

Also I'm still also wondering how putting clothing on a model ingame works. I assume this is much more common place.

Thanks

- Kahsm.

Edit PS. Oh I almost forgot, I'm taking a look at Tokamak too, Thanks.


[edited by - Kahsm on March 23, 2004 2:09:54 AM]

(I''m freakin tired, so if I make no sense, excuse me)

Hrm, I don''t recall Jedi Academy having ragdoll physics, although it did have some nice skeletal blending with the scenery and things..

Anyway, there are lots of different ways to go about doing what you want.. And you sorta asked two different questions..

Add/remove clothing methods:
1. Have the artist make different versions of a model, each with a different outfit on. If the clothing is wildly different, you''d want it modeled, obviously.. But if you have for example, different T-Shirts, you can easily "change clothing" by just having multiple sets of textures for the same model..

2. Have the artist put attachment nodes into the models. These work well for small things, like arm pads, weapons, helmets, etc.. You could use this method for any piece of clothing, except it''d be rather overkill because you''d have the character''s body being obscured by "clothing" models which are overlayed (as well as deformed by the model''s bone system, otherwise it''d look screwed up), this quickly turns into a huge headache and I would advise against this approach.

3. Use a combination of the above two methods, that is what I would recommend. I''m sure there are more methods, hopefully this gets your brain cranking though.


Slice ''n'' Dice methods:

If you pay close attention to the models in Jedi Academy, they can only be cut in certain areas, most often at bone''s joints (wrist, neck, ankles, arms, torso). I''m assuming the artists put "cut areas" into the models, these would be groups of vertices at the cut points, on either side of the limb, which would specify where the limb caps would need to be rendered, so you couldn''t see _inside_ the model''s mesh.

Or, if you wanted to get really really fancy, I''m sure there is documentation somewhere that explains how "knife" functions in 3D modeling applications work.. They do basically exactly what you''d think.


If anything I said about bones and joints is confusing, either learn more about character modeling and animation, or read some good tutorials on loading and rendering 3D models with skeletons.

Hope that helps

Klowner
--
http://dugnet.com/klown

Greetings Again.

I have read the post from Klowner and done some more research and have a few more questions.

1) If I have a model with these 'attachment' points. How, in DX, do I go about actually doing this attaching? A tutorial, or example program would be appriciated.

2) Would attachment points be a good way to do amputations? I could attach the head, arms, legs to the torso at these points, and then on the amputating even detatch it from the model bone and treat it as a seperate object (Have it fall, fly into the air, etc.)

Thanks,

EDIT: format.

- Kahsm.
My Hockey Opinions.

[edited by - Kahsm on March 25, 2004 11:43:15 AM]

Well, there''s this GameDev article if you havn''t read it yet on skinned meshes. Not sure if it has what oyu want. I haven''t read it yet.

I''m also surfing for osme stuff on this, havn''t found much. Anyone have any more good articles?


- Newb Programmer: Geek++