I downloaded Character Shop (on a 56k modem - yikes!).
It seems fine for what it does, but it's not magic - it does most of the job of intelligently attaching vertices to bones, but you still have to do a _lot_ of manual selection.
And you are stuck with the included animations - you can't add your own - none of which are appropraie to my chars.
Also you MUST have a three button mouse with a wheel.
@Ntense - If there is no other obvious way then I think you're going along the right track.
Something like:
1) load in a master skeleton with all anims.
2) set master skeleton anim going (say, walking).
3) copy master skeleton bone rotations to selected character.
In the most general sense there must be a way of doing this. I've been looking at Castle Wolfenstein, and a lot of the chars have identical gestures - they must access them from a common file(?)
Further thoughts: One way would be to have the same master (bodyless) skeleton which is loaded in for _each_ char as a reference. Then animate whichever sequence the char requires in its master skeleton, and copy the movments to the visible character.
Obviously, all chars' bones would have to be, and named, the same; but that's not too bad.
I really would appreciate any and all comments on this topic.
I'm about to start a ton of work and I don't want to get to the end of it then slap myself on the forehead and say 'Oh no, if only I'd known!'.
It seems fine for what it does, but it's not magic - it does most of the job of intelligently attaching vertices to bones, but you still have to do a _lot_ of manual selection.
And you are stuck with the included animations - you can't add your own - none of which are appropraie to my chars.
Also you MUST have a three button mouse with a wheel.
@Ntense - If there is no other obvious way then I think you're going along the right track.
Something like:
1) load in a master skeleton with all anims.
2) set master skeleton anim going (say, walking).
3) copy master skeleton bone rotations to selected character.
In the most general sense there must be a way of doing this. I've been looking at Castle Wolfenstein, and a lot of the chars have identical gestures - they must access them from a common file(?)
Further thoughts: One way would be to have the same master (bodyless) skeleton which is loaded in for _each_ char as a reference. Then animate whichever sequence the char requires in its master skeleton, and copy the movments to the visible character.
Obviously, all chars' bones would have to be, and named, the same; but that's not too bad.
I really would appreciate any and all comments on this topic.
I'm about to start a ton of work and I don't want to get to the end of it then slap myself on the forehead and say 'Oh no, if only I'd known!'.