I’m just learning all about tags and animating for ET. I’ve been able to replace weapon models using their current tags and setups.
Now I want to be able to animated my own weapon models from scratch. I am aware that tag_weapon, tag_brass, and tag_flash are required. I also have a tag_barrel for an animated part of the weapon.
I have v_sg_hand.md3 with all the animated tags on it, no models in there.
Then I have v_sg.md3 as my main weapon model.
I have v_sg_barrel.md3 as a left hand model.
So that is what I have. Now my questions…
I’m using gMax to animate these. I’m using the md3 importer/exporter and it worked great for the other models I’ve replaced as it saves out tags properly, unlike Milkshape. The gMax md3 importer also will show all the animations when you attach models to their animated tags by using “auto-attach”. This feature works great on all the stock models and animations. But on mine, I load up the hand md3 with the animated tags, then auto attach the v_sg.md3 (main weapon model) it attaches properly. But when I load up the v_sg_barrel.md3 (left hand model) it doesn’t auto attach. The tags match and I don’t know why it doesn’t work. Is there something more that just naming the tags the same? Does it have to do with naming the $tags and $parenttags in the .qc file? I’ve tried that and it didn’t seem to do anything.
I just found it would be the easiest to animate these, if I loaded up all the models with the auto-attach feature, animated the tags so I see where the models are, then when it’s done, delete all the models and I’ll have the animated tags all animated properly. This is exactly what I did when I modified an existign animation for the mg42. Works great now, but I can’t seem to get it to work from scratch. Is there are better workflow to do weapon animations? So to recap, my main question is how do I get the “barrel” models to attach to their animated tags in the “hand” md3, beacuse naming them same isn’t working.
I do not have 3D Studio Max, I only have gMax, Milkshape and Maya. I would do everything in Maya if I could, but I can’t find a decent md3 importer/exporter. Any help would be appreicated.