| Your guess is pretty much right. You have to add bones to your model, then attach vertices to the bones. Animations are applied to bones, which then move/rotate/scale the vertices attached to them. The easiest thing to do (although it is not particularly easy) is to start with an existing bird and replace the geometry with the raven you have there. Then, the only thing you have to do is hook the vertices up to bones.
To get the raven geometry to replace the old bird's copy the texture, materials, and geoset of the raven model and paste it over the same of the old bird's. Make sure that you can still convert to MDX.
The next part is a lot trickier. I'll try to explain how vertices are connected to bones. Every geoset contains matrices, which are basically listings of one or more bones that are to have an affect. Vertices are linked to matrices in VertexGroups, which are also in the geoset. I'll give an example...
Code:
Geoset {[b]
Vertices 5 {
{ 0, 0, 40 },
{ -20, -20, 0 },
{ 20, -20, 0 },
{ 20, 20, 0 },
{ -20, 20, 0 },
}[/b]
Normals 5 {
{ 0.816497, 0.408248, 0.408248 },
{ -0.408248, -0.816497, -0.408248 },
{ 0.666667, -0.333333, -0.666667 },
{ 0.408248, 0.816497, -0.408248 },
{ -0.666667, 0.333333, -0.666667 },
}
TVertices 5 {
{ 0.9995, 0.999501 },
{ 0.0005, 0.000499 },
{ 0.000499, 0.9995 },
{ 0.9995, 0.999501 },
{ 0.999501, 0.0005 },
}[b]
VertexGroup {
0,
1,
1,
1,
1,
}[/b]
Faces 1 36 {
Triangles {
{ 4, 3, 2, 2, 1, 4, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2, 2, 3, 0, 0, 0, 3, 3, 4, 0, 0, 0, 4, 4, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 2, 0 },
}
}[b]
Groups 2 2 {
Matrices { 0 },
Matrices { 1 },
}[/b]
MinimumExtent { -20, -20, 0 },
MaximumExtent { 20, 20, 40 },
BoundsRadius 34.641,
MaterialID 0,
SelectionGroup 0,
}
So, each vertex has a cooresponding vertex group. Each vertex group points to a matrix. In this example, the first vertex would be controlled by bone 0 and the rest would be controlled by bone 1.
What you'll have to do is set up the matrices based on the bone names, then do the VertexGroups to point correctly. If you need more help, which you probably will, you can ask for it.
The vertex modifier program has the Tools->Assign Vertex Group function, which will make matching vertices with matrices somewhat easier. |
