Creating First Person Perspective

[JAWSFreelao]

This is KICKING my ass, and I really want to make a first person perspective but I do not know how to. I know how to get textures to display, but positioning is a nightmare.

Anyone have any feedback?

[minilogoguy18]

For guns? It's an odd angle, the best thing to do is to import an existing model and position yours in a similar way.

[Archangel35757]

@@JAWSFreelao - look at the SoF2 documentation from Raven.

[Corto]

My solution for the odd position and angle required for the first person model to work and then for the world view to have the right scaling is this:

 

For the neutral position, I created a null object with all the transform data in 0 as you can see on the right hand side panel, and "childed" all my exportables to that null object.

 

Then, for the first person view, I created another null object, which has all the transformation data for the first person model to look correct in game (highlighted object on the screenshot). It's rotated and translated to get the exact position I want. Whenever I'm going to export the model for the first person view, I select my parent and then match all the transforms of the first person null object.

 

This is how it looks after my parent object matches the transform data of the first person null object:

 

For the world view I use the same method, but as you can see, instead of rotating oddly and moving the object around, it simply moves is up a little and scales it down by a 0.75 factor. Which makes the gun look the correct size and position in the game from a third person perspective. No more oversized guns in world view.

 

This is how it looks when I matched all transforms of the world view null object:

 

For the world view I only select the gun objects and the tags, so the exporter will ignore the hands.

 

This is the solution I created using Softimage, but I'm sure the same thing can be done with Maya, 3dsmax or Blender.

[AshuraDX]

you could technically do this much easier. If you can export animated .md3's from your package.

You could get around having to work with all these wierd angles by just completely remaking th *weapon*_hand.md3 and all related .md3 files.

[Corto]

Yes, I know, but I didn't get around to that yet. But I will. I'm just getting started and up to speed.

[Archangel35757]

@@AshuraDX - yes, the Softimage MD3 exporters I created are functionally equivalent (animations, etc.) to the 3dsMax MD3 exporters-- since that was the basis for my code.

[Langerd]

Well .. as far as i remember the weird position for MD3 is for Blaster E11 one and for the Blaster Pistol. Not sure why they are that way... It worked after i just changed the path to the other model in the weapons.dat. It is weird :/ Specially when repeater and bowcaster have normal and the same angles. 

[AshuraDX]

Well .. as far as i remember the weird position for MD3 is for Blaster E11 one and for the Blaster Pistol. Not sure why they are that way... It worked after i just changed the path to the other model in the weapons.dat. It is weird :/ Specially when repeater and bowcaster have normal and the same angles.

I can explain this.

The game loads *weaponname*_hand.md3

This .md3 only holds Tags. The game then proceeds to bolt the other .md3 files to tags found in the *_hand.md3, therefore the orientation of the weapon models does not matter at all. Only the relative orientation in comparison the the tags matters.

 

As for why the pistol and e11 models are that skewed: either a mistake on the developers end or it was done on purpose to fuck with us modders.

[Corto]

I can explain this.

The game loads *weaponname*_hand.md3

This .md3 only holds Tags. The game then proceeds to bolt the other .md3 files to tags found in the *_hand.md3, therefore the orientation of the weapon models does not matter at all. Only the relative orientation in comparison the the tags matters.

 

As for why the pistol and e11 models are that skewed: either a mistake on the developers end or it was done on purpose to fuck with us modders.

 

Well, I tried changing the orientation and position of the tags and nothing changed at all, so I had to come up with what I presented here.

[AshuraDX]

Well, I tried changing the orientation and position of the tags and nothing changed at all, so I had to come up with what I presented here.

Which tags in which .md3?

 

My process involves redoing all of the .md3 files the weapon ships with from scratch.

[minilogoguy18]

@@Corto, you didn't freeze the transforms of the tags did you? They need to retain their local transforms that they have when they are created to work properly.

[Corto]

@@Corto, you didn't freeze the transforms of the tags did you? They need to retain their local transforms that they have when they are created to work properly.

 

No, I didn't freeze the tags transformations. The only thing that worked was to actually position the gun in the odd way you see in the screencap. Maybe it's something we need to look closer with Archangel.