I've been experimenting with adding interchangeable meshes (such as armour or weapons) to an existing character model. The way I've approached this thus far is to model the additional mesh within the same scene as the character model and constrain it to the appropriate joint so that it works with existing animations. I then export it, using the Panda DirectX exporter plugin, and load the mesh (now in my program) into an additional animated mesh scene node, meaning that I have to perform the same transformations that are performed on the character (when it moves) on the new mesh too. However, I've been scratching my head over the result for a couple of days now:
Test shoulder pads in 3ds Max
Test shoulder pads in-game
As you can see, for some reason, the right shoulder pad is in the correct position - and incidentally works perfectly with all the character's animations, whereas the left shoulder pad is in the wrong position.
If anybody can explain why this possibly might be happening, I would very much appreciate it. I would also very much appreciate it if anybody could suggest a better way of handling this entire process, preferably within a single scene node but still allow me to switch meshes on the fly. Thanks in advance.
