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Working with XSI 5.0 foundation.
In the middle of making turrets for vehicles. Working off of a static model with all parts joined, trying to define which parts are supposed to move on the axis. Everything LOOKS ok, exept the turret is a bit wacky ingame. Seems like selecting the parts I want to move/not move is not working properly and is making half the model deform instead of just the turret. So... how do you get the select tool working so you can actually SEE what you've selected and know that it's working properly? Also, the weapon is not firing properly, seems like the bullets are coming out of the sky and not from the fire point. Not only that, the animated wheel teture isn't working either.. seems like another selection issue.

I'm also working on some takeoff/landing and in flight animations. Same problems with the select tool and whatnot, have not come across a good tut for this yet so someone please point me in the right direction.

you can find extensive tutorial for both setting up turrets and treads (animated wheels) in the "XSI FAQ" sticky.
i dont really understand what you mean iwith the "selectiontool", all selectiontools highlight what was selected with red (polygons, vertexes, edges) or white (object).

DarthD.U.C.K. wrote:you can find extensive tutorial for both setting up turrets and treads (animated wheels) in the "XSI FAQ" sticky.
i dont really understand what you mean iwith the "selectiontool", all selectiontools highlight what was selected with red (polygons, vertexes, edges) or white (object).

Just did exactly what it said to do. Things are working... they just aren't working they way I want them to. I select stuff, it turns red, then i assign the body of the vehicle to the node base, and the turret to the aimer x and y. It seems like the right things are highlighted, but ingame a lot of things move that aren't supposed to. The vehicle pretty much twists itself in half along with the main gun.

Those are the parts of the vehicle odf that include the turret and the wheel texture. Borrowed them from the imp fightertank since the idea is pretty much the same for this vehicle.

ah! the color of the vertexes shows to which null/bone the vertex is assigned. you can reassign them to another bone but you have to select the vertexes/points. if you select polygons or edges it wont work.

DarthD.U.C.K. wrote:ah! the color of the vertexes shows to which null/bone the vertex is assigned. you can reassign them to another bone but you have to select the vertexes/points. if you select polygons or edges it wont work.

But theres the problem. Using the point select tool (clicking on point under the select menu on the right hand side of the screen) doesn't make anything turn red when used, but the menu thing in the bottom corner says that points (122,31 14414 random numbers....) were selected. I can get it to display little crosses at the vertices if i click on the big button at the bottom of the select screen and set it to sample, this makes stuff turn red, but it's not working right ingame. I have to guesstimate whether or not its actually right bevore i reassign to the nulls i placed. This is a tedious and unfruitful process. It seems that no matter what i select, the colors of the vertices dont change to match the null either. i used this guide to make the turret.
maybe something here is wrong since ive tried it several times and havent been successful.

could you post a screen of xsi when you have points selected?

DarthD.U.C.K. wrote:could you post a screen of xsi when you have points selected?

You are using the weight editor, or assgin local correct?
This also assumes you have enveloped the mesh.
Easiest way to do it, and I am going to assume you model is a bunch of merged meshes (too lazy to go back and re-read everything. For selection starting with the body of the vehicle, select on or many points on the body (avoid selecting anything on the turret gun part) press Shift + repeatedly until all the parts of the body are selected (you will have to select at least one point on every different mesh you want to include on the body.
Now go to the weight editor (animate/deform/envelope/edit weights) and where the names of the nulls (bones) appear click on basenode then in the oval sliding looking window slide the marker to the left until it says 100, all those points are now 100% assigned to the base node.

Once all the body parts are eveloped to your satisfaction you can move on to the guns.
First problem I see is that your aimers are in the wrong order aimer y is normally the pivot side to side and aimer x in the up and down, the way you have it the gun would tilt and the barrel would pivot. You can just rename the to the other way without having to re-envelope.

You can now reassign the points for the gun body and gun barrel as mentioned above, as mentioned it is easy to do if they are made up of multiple pieces merged togther. If not then it is a pick and choose and hope you get all the right bits.

Best other advice I can give is make something simple to start with, follow one of the tuts all the way though that way you can get familiar with how envelope, weights and bones work,

Good luck, and remember one of the best ways to learn is to play.

STILL working on the weight editor, it doesn't seem to want to assign the points to the correct node no matter what i try. Have tried multiple ways to assign the points I want to the node using reassign locally and then setting their weights to 100, but they still show up as being on the wrong point when I sheck to see if it assigned it to the proper place.

On the bottom left of the screen just click on the weight painter which looks like a painters palette, with the opacity set to 100 just click on the bone you want stuff weighed to just paint the polygons. It'll really only take you like 5 mins to do it that way. You should also be looking through the help files more than waiting on a reply from a forum, trust me, those help files have all the answers you're looking for.

ERROR[PC_modelmunge msh\t98.msh]:NO POLY COUNT FOR t98: THIS IS VERY BAD
ERROR[PC_modelmunge msh\t98.msh]:NO COLLISION TREE WRITING ALL ZEROES FOR BOUNDING BOX
ERROR[PC_modelmunge msh\t98.msh]:Unable to write collision tree nodes, no tree exists

wtf never had this problem before

Check your export. Is everything under a null?

Cerfon Rournes wrote:Check your export. Is everything under a null?

Got two trees, with with model and one with aimers and node base, both under dummyroot null. middle clicked on it before exporting. Honestly ive had so many errors with this project its ridiculous. I need to animate two flyers as well and cand find a good tut since the search thingy is broken for me.

Is it safe to say that there is not one good tut but several tutorials to learn from?

keenmike wrote:Is it safe to say that there is not one good tut but several tutorials to learn from?

i am aware that there are some good ones out there but as i said i cant find them at the moment... links would be appreciated.

At the moment the modelmunge.exe crashes whenever i try to to munge either of the models im currently working on, still using the same method as described above which has worked to get the models ingame even if the weights were bad. I got the weight paint editor working but it doesn't seem to export the weights properly and i think this may be causing the error. I dont get any error messages, but this is the only thing that is different from what I was doing before.

https://sites.google.com/site/swbf2modt ... tup-in-xsi

Tut I wrote way back in the day, shouldn't be too hard to follow.