md2 models and weapons

Sachiel7 · Post by **Sachiel7** » Wed Aug 09, 2006 5:21 am

Hey all,
I had a bit of an interesting question, curious to know if anyone can help me.
The project I'm working on, I'm using a series of MD2 character meshes I've made. Now, I'd like to be able to use my Weapon's that i've created, and 'add' them to the character, much like most FPS's or RPG's. My question is, is there a way to specify the 'weapon point' in the character MD2, or will I have to manually insert the weapons into seperate sets of MD2s and have a completely different character/weapon mesh for every combination? It would not be too tasking of me to do it this way, as I'll probably only have a handful of weapons per character, but I'd like to know if I'm missing an easy way to insert weapons into character meshes. I've seen other MD2's use a feature like this...does it just attach the weapon to a specific vertex or something?
If anyone can help me, please, drop a line

-=Sachiel7=-

Valtras · Post by **Valtras** » Wed Aug 09, 2006 8:31 am

Use two nodes: one for weapon and one for player, and set the same position/rotation for them.

Sachiel7 · Post by **Sachiel7** » Wed Aug 09, 2006 1:48 pm

Duh!
:: slaps self on head ::

So I guess each weapon md2 would need to have the same animation sets as the character model, and have its positioning based off of a character reference or whatnot.
Thanks, that'll save on a good chunk of diskspace

-=Sachiel7=-

vermeer · Post by **vermeer** » Wed Aug 09, 2006 2:18 pm

Imagining you use Max or similar...Just animate the whole character with it axe or whatever, and at last you will delete the caracter to export only the weapon. It yet must have the animation...if max or whatever does nto allow it, just export using "export selected".

It does not need extra stuff for matching, as it is your base source anim, just you export in two times.

If it'd be a sword , instead of axe, again is more of artist stuff...in max is usually unlink the axe, and link the sword to hand bone or the dummy used for this...

Most packages have a similar workflow. 3d is very standard once u know a bunch of packages, hehe.

Sachiel7 · Post by **Sachiel7** » Thu Aug 10, 2006 5:06 pm

Ok, cool!
I have tinkered with Gmax, but I'm mostly using the good 'ol quake2 modeller package. I use Anim8or to create my meshes, q2modeller to put them into md2 format and animate them, and npherno's skin tool to skin the meshes.
hmm...methinks I might write a tutorial on character/weapon modelling and creation for irrlicht...
Thanks for the help!