I thought this one up while I was sitting staring at the wall.

The standard DoD models have their reference SMD with the arms stretched out to the sides. The Para troopers have theirs with the arms down and at the sides. Yet as far as I know, they both use the same animations. So does this mean that the anims are stored as a series of coordinates? Cos taht would explain a lot and make things a lot easier on animators and compilers.

From the Valve modeling doc:

Skeleton Pose data
This block contains the position and rotation data for every bone in the skeleton. In an animation SMD there will be a “time” block for every frame in the animation. In reference SMDs there will only be one time block.
The skeleton block is begun by the “skeleton” tag and ended by an “end” tag. Time block begin with “time <frame>” and end when a new “time” tag is encountered.
Skeleton
Begins the skeleton pose block
Time 0
Begins this time block
<ID> <PosX> <PosY> <PosZ> <RotX> <RotY> <RotZ>
<ID> is the bone <PosX>, <PosY> and <PosZ> are the position in world units (good to 6 significant digits). <RotX> <RotY> and <RotZ> are local Euler rotations in radians. Bones which are not children of the world report their position and rotations in their parent’s local space.
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .

Time 1
Begins next time block. Every bone has a pose entry for every frame. Reference SMD’s export only one frame.
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
end
Ends skeleton pose block

Cool, didnt know that

so..that means you dont have to pose the model like the skeleton? it could be upsidedown and would still work?

so if i have a smd with the arms stretched out and the skelaton im using has the arms down by the side like the allie para can i just asssign the bones with out bending the smd to fit the bones and it will still work ingame :confused:

Originally posted by gabagoo
so if i have a smd with the arms stretched out and the skelaton im using has the arms down by the side like the allie para can i just asssign the bones with out bending the smd to fit the bones and it will still work ingame :confused:

Only one way to find out

I mentioned this before.

Yes it does work as long as your careful. In fact modelling your reference mesh with the arms by the sides and even a little forward helps reduce distortion in the shoulders during animation.

- Jed

So far, you are all wrong. If the skeletons arms are by his side, and the modles arms are sticking strait out, then it will be distorted. The whole way skeletal animations work is that the bones have the model connected, so the model swings WITH the bones. If the arms dont match the arm bones of the skeleton, it wont look normal ingame.

And as for para models, the biggest difference between them and the normal modles is the order, and number of, animations they use. The default animations dont have FG-42 animations, and they are in a different order. And then theres those annoying submodels.

good to know devin , thx

Been down that road many many times.

if doesnt matter what position the model is, as long as the bones are correctly aligned and assigned with the model. you could put the guy in a fetal position for all i care

oops I didn't notice this sentence:
"Bones which are not children of the world report their position and rotations in their parent’s local space." D:

:p