Weapons Mod/Dan & Herby's think tank

"Yeah, you". I've been on several other mod teams. When I quit helping I'll let ya know

Seriously though. I saved each mech file (mesh) and textures into the same folder to eliminate the texture path. That's what I had to do with other models in past mods. Hope it was the correct procedure.

The Champion was simple. It only needed a couple of mesh tweaks. I just cut the gun box right below the guns and added that portion of the box to the torso mesh, easy.

The Anni was a little different. The LOD_1 mesh was crooked and deformed. The head was a mess. First I compared it to the LOD_0 mesh and straightened it all up. Then I had to cut the LOD_1 torso back faces in half to make an upper and lower half. I had to do this because the LOD_0 back was made this way and the two halves were mapped to different textures. The LOD_1 mesh however, was all mapped to the same texture. It was made wrong to begin with.


As for the Fly... Not sure what to do about it. The design of the mech is seriously not favorable for a rotating torso. I can just add the lower guns to the torso and call it good but that doesn't fix the serious problem of making the model look right with a rotating torso. I've studied it and worked on several different approaches for fixing it. I finally settled on something that actually works but it definitely changes the mech. Two drawbacks to this approach are #1, the two small outside side guns need to be removed because they don't work with anything I've tried. These would be the arms (only allow stock configs with empty arms). The pic shows what I'm talking about.

The second thing is, the hip (not the pivot point) is relocated into the long cylinder structure behind the cockpit and the legs are attached to the rotating rings on each end just inside the outer caps. I modeled these in for visual appeal. They should rotate with the leg movement. The second drawback is that the torso will only move 40 degrees to the left and 40 degrees to the right without interference. Up and down are not a problem.

I took liberties with some of the textures. and redesigned a few things. I made the cockpit stubbier, taller and increased the diameter of the guns. Added the missile rack to the torso.
Pics show the mess I made of the Fly body. The different pics also show the max throw of the torso. The pivot is a huge U-joint under the rear of the cockpit. Everything functions correctly.

Straight

Overhead Left

Up

Down and Left

If you think it would work I'll finish it. If not then... I'll finish it anyway. I just won't give it to ya 

If I leave the arms they'll be hooked into the hip. The hip is now the cylindrical section. The hip doesn't move but the arms will swing out to follow the cockpit. We don't have the ability to move and reconnect pivot points. If we could connect the 'arms' to the 'hip' we could make it work... I'll try it. We'll just have to see if it works.

By the way. There are now 470 faces in the Hip/Torso group. Originally there were 134. So I increased the face count by 350%.
In all the other faces the count totals 366 faces.
Adding in the old Torso/hip count it's up to 500 faces.
The new count will be 836 faces.
The increase is 67.2%, so I added a little more than a half a mech to the mesh. Not bad considering what I had to do. By the way. That's including the arm mesh, the rotating leg anim, the u-joint mock-up, and the gun barrel mod. I don't think this is anything to worry about. I'm sure the game can handle this type of increase across the board. There's always built in headroom with games for reliability reasons.

Ok, I went in game and gave it some thought. You've got a great idea with what you've done and it's really cool but obviously it's just not going to work.

Here's an idea:

If you look at the Supernova, especially from behind, you'll see a vertical cylinder between the pelvic platform and the upper back torso. This cylinder is part of the torso mesh, but it looks like it's something the torso sits on in order to pivot for torso-turning.
If you create something like that for the firefly and make it just high enough so the "shoulders" clear the legs (yes I know the "shoulders" are supposed to be part of the legs, but trust me, they're not part of the leg animation) It will work. You'll need to lower the missile rack a little, and the forward gun, and maybe the "pelvic" guns that are now part of the torso mesh, and the arms will have to angle down or perhaps do a letter "m" curve in order to clear the legs on a torso turn, but all the firepoints could and need to be kept the same this way or some way.

I don't know how the new "cylindrical" will get textured, but look at the one on the supernova. There is a texture that gets used on many of the mechs in a group of "miscellaneous" textures...perhaps it's in there.

It's possible the legs will look like they're moving in mid-air once the torso gets lifted. Perhaps (and I haven't gone in-game to visualize this yet) horizontal "cylinders" could be attached to the pelvis mesh to make it look like it'll work?

To gain a better understanding of how the leg animations look, and how my torso-turning alteration looks against the leg animations, go in game, pilot a firefly, use the "x" key twice to get the "side view", then hit the "look left" button and run around like that turning the torso.

I'm sure you've surmised this already, and sorry I didn't describe it to you better from the beginning, but I'm running under the assumption that as long as we keep nodes such as pivot points, fire points, where the game expects them to be, then mesh shapes don't matter to the game, or the animations. The game will animate whatever you do, we're the ones who worry about whether it looks right.

If you can swap the leg anim of the Fly with something with shorter legs I can make it work the way you want without making the Fly taller. The only thing I see with shorter legs is the Puma... It might look a little funny though... But it's deceiving. I can force the legs to be taller by changing the angle of the thigh and the feet. I can straighten the thigh and add the same degree of rotation to the feet so they sit flat on the ground. Can't tell without trying it. I could also try to change the angle of the Fly's thigh and feet to shorten it a little and produce the same results. OR, I could just make the Fly taller to accommodate an actual hip. It will cause the pivot to move a little but I don't think it will be enough to be a problem. Either way, If the mech doesn't end up the same height it won't reflect on the weapon placement. They'll follow the hip and/or torso.

I can fix the Strider so it won't interfere with the hip when it swivels. No great effort required. This one is easy.

The Owens doesn't cut it with a swivel torso. This one is harder to deal with than the Fly. Even with the mere 20 degree movement it has now it looks bad. It needs to be set to immobile.

I used my design for the torso. Kept the rings, rear cowl, and fat guns (I like the fat guns ). Missile launcher is a little bigger also.

Had to redesign the thigh (made a shouldered horizontal extension), hip (narrowed), and shorten the rear 'box' (you can see from the pic), and also had to move the bottom weapons into the cockpit to keep from lifting the torso too high (looks cool). All pivots are in the same position. I had to lift the torso and hip for clearance.

I reused all the old textures. They suck for mapping compound surfaces. The new upper thigh gave me fits trying to map it. Also, I'm trying something new with smooth groups. I'm using an old technique I used to use for Homeworld. We'll see if it works. It may not. Importing may weld the vertices back together again... anyway, the Fly can be our experimental model. Hope moving the pieces doesn't cause sync problems with the animations. I couldn't tell exactly where everything goes. I had to use pics and my best judgment. Some things may need to be tweaked slightly but we won't know until it's in game.

About 850 faces. It looks a lot different. It almost looks like an Argus. I'll have all the parts ready to upload tomorrow (Sunday)... forgot to ask... Is this what you were looking for?

Max tilt up 15 degrees. Max tilt down 15 degrees. 30 degrees total travel. I'm sure that's stock. All I could get. Left and right will go as far as you need.


I 'could' do the Owens in the same fashion... just a thought...

Can't do the Owens. It has no hip. At first I thought I was missing the hip but when I started putting it together It became apparent that there is no hip. It has some movement R/L in game now and it looks very odd when it tries to turn. It needs to revert back to rigid.