Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins

[Verdite]

Im thinking about remaking something like the skeleton in the SoM stock set. Just looking at the "skeleton", it looks strange, but i can see triangles (i'm guessing these are bones.) im curious, do you think this way of placing bones would be better, and the red lines, leading to the objects, how do you think they are attached and controlled?

[airflamesred]

HwitVLF
Yes thats draw debugging. Now we know what it does it maybe easier to name!
ctrl E brings up number input for bone movement and rotation. I went through keynote with notepad to find any more clues and it would appear qdef is another usable mesh tag, though I couldn't see how it differs from bdef - yet. Theres more to come I think.

Nice helmets Verdite

[dmpdesign]

Im making headway, found some nasty things along the way I will document to help others out with their animations...

A familiar face:

[airflamesred]

'showboneinfluence' seems the most apropriate to me. I'm finding this really usefull - doing a 15000 quad cow (one mesh) so its quite easy just to alter the anchors to suit. The enable simple setting seems to work in reverse for me. ie unticking seems to give some restrictions?
If its alright with everyone I'll keep posting the nibbles of info in this thread and maybe do a full tut once all has been revealed. I hate those half-arsed tuts with 'I don't know what that button does' bits in.

airflamesred sets of for another beer in the Bone and Anchor Freehouse!

Someone over at DA has found an old hair/grass plug-in if anyones interested It's pretty versatile.

[dmpdesign]

I have a question for you metaseqouia experts.

I began animating my first enemy model by putting in his walking positions.  Unfortunately, to make it easy on myself, when I created the walking I actually had the model step forward in the file (it was alot easier than trying to have him walk in place).  I was hoping at the end I could simply select all the bones and move them backwards on the z axis so that the animation didnt move forward (since the game controls enemy position and not the animation).

Does anyone know a good trick to take all the bones of an animation frame and apply an x,y or z adjustment to them all at once so the relative positioning stays the same but the location can be dragged back over 0,0,0?

If not, I might as well trash this animation and start over :)

[airflamesred]

Hmmm No I don;t think there is, if I'm reading this right. Even re setting the bones won't move the mesh - only change the pivot point.
On the upside once you have this animation sorted it will be simple to save the mqo file,re-open and just replace the mesh and use the same walk cycle over and over

[airflamesred]

Good point on the chara file there's a lot to be learnt from that (rolling shoulders etc) - it's classy
The cow is for the terragen comunity. I wanted to give something back and I'v seen one of a similar quality over at turbo squid for $150! so it should go down well.
Ill upload the plug-in once Chelsea have given ManU a footballing lesson!

[Verdite]

Good to know im not the only Brit around here! Todd the texturing looks great. Im gonna ask u about how you get you're textured model into game without x2mdl distorting and moving you're UV map. I'm getting a bit frustrated with it. When you export the model do you need to do something to retain the original texture map?

[dmpdesign]

John, I may have done mine wrong, I created the bones etc all from hand and not in the plugin, so my bones dont connect etc...at least I dont think so.

Would you mind if I emailed you the files tonight so you can have a peek?

The issue I saw with my model in game with the walking forward is the hitbox/shadow stayed in one place and my model started walking away from it, so I am fairly certain I did it wrong.

[airflamesred]

I've put a readme for translation purposes just to get folks started, Please don't feel obliged HwitVLf, to do your magic, though it is one of those few that needs it.
regards
Mark