Model\Animation Help

[Smeed]

Hello,
i've recently gotten into modelling and am catching on pretty quickly, but i have come to a problem that i can't figure out.

I used one of the tutorials made available by some of the members here, and have succesfully inserted a weapon from one unit to another. The only problem is that the weapon is the Morning Star from the Gnoll.

The problem i am having is A: getting the ball\chain to have the "free form" appearance it has in the Gnoll's animations, and B: getting the ball texture to face the camera at all times (hopefully you understand what i mean).

I'm unsure if it is something to do with the animations or with the modeling but, regardless, any and all help would be appreciated.

 

[Eusira]

So you want the flash to be orientated towards the camera? I think that involves Sphere, which makes the blood mage projectile a simple model. It looks the same from all directions, but is 2D

 

[Oinkerwinkle]

The things you want to do involve manually adding and animating bones.

The name for it always faces the camera is billboarding. Basically what you have to do is add a new bone centered on the ball's plane, attach the plane to that bone, and add a "BillBoarded," line to that bone. I don't know how much you know, so I don't know if that's too vauge.

The moving the the mace itself is more complicated. What you'll probably want to do is add a new bone (or more than one) at the base of the chain, copy in the animations from that bone from the gnoll, and then manually rearrange the keys. A program like the key redistributer from http://www.oinkerwinkle.com/tools/download.html can help with that rearranging. Again, I don't know if this isn't clear enough, so ask for clarification on some part(s) if you want.

 

[Smeed]

Thank you for the help, but i have come across another issue. I was able to billboard the plane and get all of the bones working properly. I have redistributed the keys, as well, but am having problems with the animations. They work as a whole, but i need to tweak them for a more realistic look.

If someone could please fill me in as to what the values mean in the animations fields in, for example, this (knight - attack 1):

22095: { -0.0925167, 0.684156, 0.374309, -0.619083 },
InTan { -0.0925167, 0.684156, 0.374309, -0.619083 },
OutTan { -0.0925167, 0.684156, 0.374309, -0.619083 },

I have a fealing that each value is associated with an x, y, and z coordinates and timing, but am unsure as to how they work.

Please excuse me if i sound a bit noobish, im just trying to figure this crap out, haha.