I don't know what to call it... skeleton maybe?

[archvilell]

I'm making a model of a robot mech for my game development club, and right now I have the pieces of my mech. This will be a Half-Life 2 mod, and my question is what is the best way to hook the pieces to the body to work with the engine? I don't know anything about hooking pieces to other pieces other than Parent-Child, and I'm pretty sure that's wrong.

Any tips or tutorials would be highly appreciated.

Archvilell

 

[entity]

That would be called rigging, assigning bones to your object. google it

 

[crackhead]

what software are you using? u will need to download the valve source addon. then create a biped guide. match all the bones to fit in the right places. then select create rig from guide. then assign the vertices to the bones. there is an easy way to do this but i only know how to do it in xsi. then read a tutorial on weightmapping and weight map it. then start creating your animations.

 

[archvilell]

Sorry about the delay, college has been kicking my butt lately. Also sorry for not specifying what software I'm using. Yes, I am using SoftImage XSI Mod Tool 4.2.

I downloaded the Source add-on. So I need to create a biped guide? How do I do that? Then how do I create bones? Then how do I assign vertices to them? I've never built a skeleton for a model before, but with a little teaching I should be good to go...for a while, lol.

Archvilell

 

[crackhead]

ok create a biped guide by clicking the half life 2 tab at the top right and clicking character:biped guide i think it is. then move the boxes around to line up with your mesh. when its all ready. click create rig from guide. then delete the guide. press 2 t ogo into animation mode. go to deform>envelope>set envelope. now press 8 to launch the scene explorer. open valvebiped. click on envelope_deformers. right click to finish. now you need to adjust the weights to make your model work smoothly but i cant be bothered to get into that right now. then you need to animate it etc.

 

[archvilell]

How do I delete the arms? The mech (as I have it now, it might change) has no arms, just legs. I'm just playing with it now so I'll know what to do later. The delete key does not get rid of sections of the guide.

Archvilell

 

[crackhead]

well you dont have to delete them they will be invisible when its compiled. i guess if you deleted them from the biped rig. (if you can) and then youd have to take all references to those bones out of your qc file.