Bone Stretching

Scripting Issues
1

Is it possible to stretch a 3D Mesh out by lengthening a bone using code? An example would be giving the arm bones more height thus making the Actors arms longer, without effecting how the vertices animate and not messing up the animations.

Was wondering if there was something in Panda’s APIs that would allow for this…

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My God, just started playing the game Dead Space and one thing is for sure....  All the shaders and high tech stuff put into the game is not helping it at all.  In fact, it's been the enemy surprises, story and shooting action holding up the game.  All the shaders and over done graphic effects make the game run less smooth...even when clocking over 60.  

So far the "Fun Factor" has been so so.  That is the one thing that's going down the drain because of graphics...fun factor.  I only bought the game just to see what all the Ramp and Rave was about.  You could really say Dead Space is in the image of Bio Shock, but with its own style...that's true.  Maybe it's the fact I've never played a game just for visuals and expected high amounts of Fun Factor because the game was rated as tops.  

It's amazing how these companies can Over Hype a video game just to get it to sell the most copies...money talks as always.  What's even more "wacked", is how gamers go and buy a game just because some website rated it a 10.0...like GameSpot, which is backed by money.  Hell, GameSpot even fired one of the writers for rating the wrong game too low.  The Company that made the game cancelled their ad campaign with GameSpot and that was major CASH lost!  Websites like that are BS.  If you have the cash, you'll get your 8.0 or higher.
2

Did you try scaling the bone along the length-wise axis?

3

I haven’t tried anything yet, because I didn’t know if it was supported by Panda3D or not. I’m guessing if its possible, you’ll have to isolate the bone you wish to scale…like when you’re adding a weapon to a hand bone, you isolate the hand bone…storing it into a variable.

I guess from there I should just search the APIs for any bone manipulation functions or methods that involve scaling. I’ve been so busy playing around with Normal and Height mapping, I haven’t had to chance to try any bone scaling.

I’ve noticed that Bump Mapping works differently with Point Lights vs Directional Lights. It seems like the Bump Map effect is correct with Point Lights, but doesn’t look like it’s even applied with Direction Lights.

Are point lights the key to Bump Mapping or am I doing something wrong?

Lv5WallText = loader.loadTexture(MYGameDIR+"datacab/gizacityo/gc_walltext_1a_n.jpg", MYGameDIR+"datacab/gizacityo/gc_walltext_1a_h.jpg");
tsgLv5Wall = TextureStage('Lv5WallNH');
tsgLv5Wall.setMode(TextureStage.MNormalHeight);
self.GPlvWing5.setTexture(tsgLv5Wall, Lv5WallText);

I have one Point Light and One Directional Light, giving light to an area. It seems like the Directional Light destroys the effect of the Bump Mapping. That’s why I’m confused on rather or not Bump Mapping is a Point Light thing only in P3D.

4

I think I’ve figured out a way to force P3D’s Bump Mapping to work for me. :smiley:

So far so good, but I’ve only tested in on a small mountain range. I still have a point light and directiona light in the scene; and this time the directional light is destroying things. This is a plus for me because textures that already look good will now look godly if I can successfuly apply the Bump Mapping in every place that could use it.

5

Yes, it is possible and easy to accomplish: just use one of the variants of setScale in the corresponding nodepath
take a look at panda3d.org/reference/1.7.2/ … 6febf62290

I hope it helps