Hello everyone. I have a player model that has a separate mesh for each body part like: body, head, tail, mane, wings. And it basically has interchangable body parts. What would be the best way to export this?
If this is the only such piecewise character, or if there are only a few, then I might be inclined to export each piece separately. The pieces can then be assembled and controlled in whatever configuration is called for within your code.
That said, I don’t claim that this is the best way; I doubt that there is a single “best” way, just various ways with various advantages and disadvantages, and which might be more or less preferable to one dev or another.
If you haven’t already seen it, this is a relevant manual page:
https://docs.panda3d.org/1.10/python/programming/models-and-actors/multi-part-actors
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It’s only the player model that is that way. It basically works by allowing the player to choose from an assortment of bodies, heads, tails, manes, and wings. Each part is a separate mesh, that shares the same armature. The original game that I’m porting uses Ogre, but it’s open-source, so I have all the code and blender files for it.
I read the docs for multi-part actors, but I do have a few questions about that like:
- do I need to have a separate set of animations for each body part or can each part share the same animation files?
- do I have to split the armature into one piece per body part?
- how can I make sure that the animation for each part is on the same frame?
Because, basically the original has one copy of the armature that all the parts are attached to and it is animated as one piece.
Animations can be stored in separate files without any meshes. So all parts could use the same animation files because they have the same armatures.
You don’t have to delete the bones, so armature stays unmodified. You need to split character mesh into separate meshes and objects.
Multi-part actor is doing this automatically.
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Ok. The player model is already in separate meshes, so that shouldn’t be an issue. Thanks for your help. And nice profile pic. 