5 - Advanced Characters

[moonsense715]

Author: Westwood Studios

Skill level: 5

 

By Greg Hjelstrom

 

Creating a New Character Model

To create a new character model for Renegade, you will want to make sure it is compatible with one of the animation sets that come with the game. In order to do this, you need to model your character on the same set of bones that we used to create our characters. Some gmax files can be found in the character examples directory that will allow you to do this. The file named Male.gmax contains the bones for a male character and the Female.gmax file contains the bones for a female character. These files contain several elements that are critical to creating a working character.

 

The Skeleton

Below is a picture of the male template with everything except the bones hidden. Remember that for a W3D model, a bone is simply anything in the scene that has the Export Transform option enabled.

 

 

For a character model, it is important that you observe the following limitations:

 

- For the base pose (frame 0), never move or rotate any of these bones. You may animate them in max to test your character but never change them in the base pose.

 

- You cannot create new bones or remove existing bones or your model will be incompatible with the animations in the game. This means that any meshes you add to the gmax file to create your character must have the Export Transform option disabled.

 

Collision Meshes

Characters use two kinds of collision detection in Renegade. There is a single box in the character that is named WorldBox and is used to physically move the character around in the world. This object is flagged to be an AABox (axis-aligned-box) and has physical collision enabled on it. There are also a set of meshes attached to the skeleton that have projectile collision detection enabled. The names of these meshes tell the game engine how to scale the damage applied to a character when a bullet hits them. Below is a screenshot of the projectile collision meshes for the male character and their W3D settings:

Notice that all of the projectile collision meshes are marked as hidden and they do not have Export Transform enabled. They are simply hierarchically connected to the bone they are supposed to move with.

 

Modelling your character

To create your character model, you can put any number of meshes or skinned meshes into the file. Typically, we used a skinned mesh for the body of each character and a skinned mesh for the head but there is nothing preventing you from using rigid meshes that are hierarchically linked to the bones (like the collision meshes are) to make a more robotic looking character. Characters may use any W3D material settings as well. Read the W3D documentation for more information on how to model and texture your character.

 

Exporting Your Character

When you export your character, you need to use the following export options:

The key option here is the Export Using Existing Skeleton option. This tells the exporter to make your model use the existing S_A_Human.W3D skeleton (which will work as long as you did not move, add, or delete any bones in your gmax file). The S_A_Human.w3d file is for male characters and the S_B_Human.w3d file is for female characters. Exporting your character in this way ensures that the game will be able to play all of the character animations on your model.