I posted this on the main Unrealtournament.com forums, but when you're casting about desperately for an answer, you can't have too much exposure. Bear in mind, this missive is directed to the people at EPIC who made UT2004. But if anyone here knows any solutions to try, I'm listening.....
I'm afraid the weapon distortion which I've mentioned here before has become a severe factor in the importing of my latest model.
In previous personal player models (Raptor, Junkmech, Bender) there was distortion in the placement of the new WEAPON meshes, due to coding and scaling you gave them. Where old weapon meshes from UT2003 appear in the PPM's hands correctly, the NEW ones were displaced in space a couple of virtual 'feet' and do not appear properly in the PPM's hands.
The size of the model when exporting from your 3D suite of choice with ActorX is most certainly a factor in this, as was guessed by several modellers who had similar problems. I decided, with my latest model, to test it out by building it smaller before animating and exporting it.
I guessed wrong. With trial and error, you ofttimes hit error first. Making it smaller only amplifed the displacement when importing the model to UED. The distortion is now so bad with new weapons like the AVRIL that it would be a severe in-game distraction. Here's the proof...
As you see, with weapons like the Avril, the Redeemer and so on, the weapon isn't just floating out there - it's WAY out there. The link gun, shock rifle, assault rifle and other 'new' weapon meshes suffer the same problem, which can't be fixed by tweaking the righthand socket in UED.
There's no way I'd be able to re-scale him in MAX without destroying the skeletal setup and starting all over. And I equally doubt I'd get a precise vertex match even if I did. Errors will creep in, and the any differences could cause major issues (possibly). I can't just select and scale the whole thing in MAX either. It won't let you. You wind up with a stretched and distorted stick person.
Is there anything you can think of that I can do to fix this short of bagging all the work I've already done and starting from scratch? Are there any settings in UED that might be tweaked? (Editing the righthand socket won't cut it - we all know that doing that will only throw the old weapon meshes out into space.) Or better yet - is there a patch to fix the 3rd person new weapon meshes so they'll behave like the old weapons meshes do? (That would be an ideal solution). I certanily can't just tell people who download the latest PPM to 'live with it' when their Avril is trailing about 10 virtual feet behind them....
Radiosity from the Beyondunreal forums has been doing some coding for this model. I asked him about this, and he had this to say:
"...It's an epic problem with their attachment classes for the new weapons. Normally weapons are imported inverted on the z axis for 3rd person models, which works perfectly. But for some bizarre reason epic decided to import all their new 3rd person models the correct way up and then used locational offset values in the script classes to invert the weapon in game (because they would appear upside down in game if they're imported the right way up in Ued; I know, confusing and not very logical).
Epic have admitted themselves that they have no idea why this happens to some models, but hopefully they'll fix it in a patch when they find the cause....."
Modellers have lived with this issue for a year now. (Check the archives - I've posted about this very issue from the moment UT2004 was released.) Isn't it about time there was a fix from the people who made the game and created the glitch in the first place?
I'm afraid the weapon distortion which I've mentioned here before has become a severe factor in the importing of my latest model.
In previous personal player models (Raptor, Junkmech, Bender) there was distortion in the placement of the new WEAPON meshes, due to coding and scaling you gave them. Where old weapon meshes from UT2003 appear in the PPM's hands correctly, the NEW ones were displaced in space a couple of virtual 'feet' and do not appear properly in the PPM's hands.
The size of the model when exporting from your 3D suite of choice with ActorX is most certainly a factor in this, as was guessed by several modellers who had similar problems. I decided, with my latest model, to test it out by building it smaller before animating and exporting it.
I guessed wrong. With trial and error, you ofttimes hit error first. Making it smaller only amplifed the displacement when importing the model to UED. The distortion is now so bad with new weapons like the AVRIL that it would be a severe in-game distraction. Here's the proof...
As you see, with weapons like the Avril, the Redeemer and so on, the weapon isn't just floating out there - it's WAY out there. The link gun, shock rifle, assault rifle and other 'new' weapon meshes suffer the same problem, which can't be fixed by tweaking the righthand socket in UED.
There's no way I'd be able to re-scale him in MAX without destroying the skeletal setup and starting all over. And I equally doubt I'd get a precise vertex match even if I did. Errors will creep in, and the any differences could cause major issues (possibly). I can't just select and scale the whole thing in MAX either. It won't let you. You wind up with a stretched and distorted stick person.
Is there anything you can think of that I can do to fix this short of bagging all the work I've already done and starting from scratch? Are there any settings in UED that might be tweaked? (Editing the righthand socket won't cut it - we all know that doing that will only throw the old weapon meshes out into space.) Or better yet - is there a patch to fix the 3rd person new weapon meshes so they'll behave like the old weapons meshes do? (That would be an ideal solution). I certanily can't just tell people who download the latest PPM to 'live with it' when their Avril is trailing about 10 virtual feet behind them....
Radiosity from the Beyondunreal forums has been doing some coding for this model. I asked him about this, and he had this to say:
"...It's an epic problem with their attachment classes for the new weapons. Normally weapons are imported inverted on the z axis for 3rd person models, which works perfectly. But for some bizarre reason epic decided to import all their new 3rd person models the correct way up and then used locational offset values in the script classes to invert the weapon in game (because they would appear upside down in game if they're imported the right way up in Ued; I know, confusing and not very logical).
Epic have admitted themselves that they have no idea why this happens to some models, but hopefully they'll fix it in a patch when they find the cause....."
Modellers have lived with this issue for a year now. (Check the archives - I've posted about this very issue from the moment UT2004 was released.) Isn't it about time there was a fix from the people who made the game and created the glitch in the first place?