First person legs and body

[marauder2k9]

Has anyone been able to get the first person legs and body to work properly? whenever i enable third person model rendering in first person mode the camera seems to be inside the character and i have tried moving the nodes for eye and cam but it doesn't seem to fix things no matter where i place them. will upload pics in a minute of what i mean

[Duion]

What you are trying to do is more a workaround and not a good solution for the final product. Even most modern games don't do it that way, so it seems that it is not that easy. I tried it and the biggest problem is yet to come for you, it is to align the arms and the weapon with where it actually shoots, if you need that also later.

What you could try is use the same model but remove the head for first person, so it does not interfere with the camera.

[marauder2k9]

i was using the stock soldier art for testing purposes, it used to work in 1.1 and 1.0 i think also but for some reason the soldier model doesn't work anymore

[Duion]

It is just a question of positioning the eye node correctly, but maybe something has changed, I did not test this with the newest version.

[Azaezel]

Model side, it was swapping the eye and alteye and shiftin the cam position http://i.imgur.com/549qlnC.jpg

[marauder2k9]

you are 100% correct Azaezel http://i.imgur.com/h150oOW.png

Will take some modelling changes to get it to match up with the fp gun and all that but thats not a problem this was just a test with the soldier model to see if it was going to work at all. I was moving the alteye around and getting nowhere didnt think to change the name lol going to use my own models now :D thanks again

Highest look angle: http://i.imgur.com/Qd6WO7f.png

Lowest look angle http://i.imgur.com/mW39L7T.png

[Nils]

T3D's Soldier FP model doesn't include animations below the pelvis (only arms, spine, head etc.) You'll need to create new FP anims for that to make it work properly.

[marauder2k9]

this was just to see how the nodes matched up between the two, if at all, and to find out why the camera was being such a pain before, i was never intending to use the soldier model was going to use my own.

[marauder2k9]

to use a valve resource i think im going to make my 1st person body model like this http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/7449/part1s.jpg

Which is actually going to be the first lod of the third person model that only the client can see

[Duion]

What about the arms? Are they a separate first person model?

[marauder2k9]

yea arms would be basically what the fp arms are at the moment

[Duion]

So you have to load two separate models into the first person? Cannot imagine right now how this should be done.

[marauder2k9]

the same way it is done already just the first lod of the 3rd person model that renders along with the first person arms would be the one without the head and arms

[Duion]

I think this has to be modded, since I don't think Torque supports that by default.

[marauder2k9]

I think torque already uses the 1st lod of the 3rd person model for this im not sure, the only thing i think should present a problem would be the shadows, shadows will have to come from the next lod mesh

http://i.imgur.com/mW39L7T.png

[Duion]

Your soldier has 4 arms, you see the problem now?

[marauder2k9]

which is why i posted the picture of the valve resource

[marauder2k9]

http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/7449/part1s.jpg

^^ like this you see? no arms in 3rd person mesh, i think this should be the first lod model for it to work properly so it doesnt make 4 arms in first person view

[Nils]

Get where you're aiming at marauder2k9, it's a good idea!

A problem though is that if you swap the TP mesh with this in a multiplayer game it will be visible to other players. It will include some code changes to make this work properly.

Instead of creating a separate mesh without arms and a head you could also use skins. You then just create the diffuse map with an alpha channel where the arms and head are transparent. The TP material would not use transparency but the FP legs material would. This way you can save the extra polys and work you'd need for a separate mesh!

 

// Material for the TP body
singleton Material(base_CharacterMat)
{
   diffuseMap[0] = "art/actors/actor_diff.dds";
}
 
// Material for the FP legs
singleton Material(legs_CharacterMat)
{
   diffuseMap[0] = "art/actors/actor_diff.dds";
   alphaTest = "1";
   alphaRef = "48";
}

Further if you manage to render the FP legs material on the client side only, and show the TP material for other players you'd solve the above problem as well.

[Duion]

But why not use a model with arms?

[marauder2k9]

the arms are actually coming from the first person model for each weapon that u make, the client/player sees the usual first person model file and the third person model file without arms or head, u only have to make accurate reload animations for the first person meshes and not the third person mesh. the third person mesh that will be used for first person body will only need ur basics eg: walk run jump land look etc etc no weapon animations then a separate 3rd person mesh would be used for what the server/multiplayer sees. this is the one that would need to be used for shadows as well otherwise your shadows will have no head or arms lol i think this is similar to what the likes of battlefield uses. Accurate reload animations for every weapon in a third person mesh are rare and also expensive to have. Best to use simple ones and keep expensive ones that can be re-used for your fp arms meshes

[marauder2k9]

http://i.imgur.com/vlzJLah.png

http://i.imgur.com/iJ9fJ3O.png

The result, and problem, shadow needs 2nd lod not 1st anyone know how to change this?

This was just a quick edit of the soldier model to remove arms nothing else just to illustrate how it could be pulled off

[Duion]

You probably will need some coding skills for changing the shadowcasting that it will use the third person model for first person shadowcasting.

The easy solution is to just turn it off.

[marauder2k9]

i original thought this would be something to do with it $pref::PSSM::detailAdjustScale = "0.85"

but ive changed the value a few different times and im not seeing much difference each time

[Azaezel]

You're looking for what's touched by https://github.com/GarageGames/Torque3D/commit/88bb577c82cd55be15b5db481558b3df7daa8066#diff-b8335f02a980665dd7dc953db7a637ca though I do have to say at this point, I'm not quite following what it is you're going for here...