animated skins

[S.cavA.rmyG.en]

one question I got is can you use a set of meshs in a loop to animate a model skin?
I think
the model would have no animations but its skin would be animated.

need some feed back on the idea nothing els right now.

[S.cavA.rmyG.en]

I wonder why it has not ben done with all the crome  form the scions.
I mean all some one needs is the right effect to animate the texture with.
but I don't know enoth of the coding so don't take my word on it.
wate now I got somthing to test GIF
I think the models could be recoded to use a form of GIF as a list of orderd PIC textures.
you could all ways use a 6 layer Model animation having each Mesh whith a diffent texture
but it mite be hard to get the ODF just right.
3 meshs for antmating the Model and 3 run in loop acttivated as a sub animation with the fist 3.
I think It could work but I am not completly surr.
I think 3 would work for a unaintmated model like the ISDF tank.

got this form GIF and Blender animations and Doc Slaor's way of inporting models.
and just some thinking and looking at the incoding for XSI models in note pad.
and of corse ODF files testing.

[S.cavA.rmyG.en]

If any thing comes up on this I think the final or some part should be in the EP.

[mrtwosheds]

you could all ways use a 6 layer Model animation having each Mesh whith a diffent texture

There is only 1 mesh.
The texture is taken from only 1 xsi when making it.

[S.cavA.rmyG.en]

only one model retextured using a diffent mesh for each stage of the animation.
all run in a loop in the ODF.

Now, Black Manatee found a way to modify the .MSH file so that alternate skins are possible. I'll explain it on an example: You have a file, lets say evtank00.msh (the Hadean Xares). You want to create a mod where the EDF steals the blueprints and is able to recreate this fabulous tank. But the EDF Xares will not have the same color (orange!) then the Hadean Xares. What now? Is the whole mod project in danger?

No. First, create your orange skin by modifying the original Hadean skin (evtank00.pic).
Then open up the evtank00.msh in a Hex Editor program and find all the references to the Hadean skin (evtank00.pic).
Then replace the word evtank00.pic with the name of your new (orange) skin. Make sure both file names have the EXACT same length. best is to replace evtank00.pic with evtank99.pic or similar.
Then save the .MSH file in the HEX EDITOR. Rename the newly saved .MSH file to evtank_edf.msh or something and make sure the reference is correct in the corresponding evtank_edf.odf file!
So now you have a different .MSH file for your EDF version of the Xares tank.

this is something that got me thinking that as long as each is renamed right it should still work with a good ODF or DLL supported ODF chain.
got some idea what I am saying now?

[Nielk1]

Changing object over and over to just mess with the skin? Lagfest.

[mrtwosheds]

Don't think odf's can work that way, think they are just loaded at game start, not reprocessed every turn.
Even if they did, as Nielk1 said, it would be horrible.

[TheJamsh]

Animated skin for a unit is kind of possible so long as you dont want it to morph or animate in anyway. BBB actually started this off with his caustics idea. You just have an invisible unit, with all the HP's neccesary, and then create a single-frame mesh of the units outline. SO long as you dont mind making every animation frame manually for that texture you can do it by quickly swapping the mesh with a draw_geom effect.

However, that will take a LONG time, wont light correctly, is also laggy and pointless. Not to mention that draw_geom's dont stay put in multiworld.

.APNG would be the way to go for this rather than .GIF, but how much memory do you want to commit to those animated textures. (BZ2 doesn't support any type of animated image. I kind of brought this up with GSH once, but it was shot down immediataly, and im not surprised by that)

[mrtwosheds]

And lets face it, what would you animate anyway, a few flashing lights? that can be done with simple mesh animations if you think about it.

[Avatar]

FE had a very nice blinking light on top of the EDF Armory.  Slightly modified it makes excellent red or green blinking strobes for conventional aircraft...

The only times you'd need to animate a texture instead of a model would be for something like a display, a color changing ship, or a very trick alien ship like a Vorlon or something...  Most other uses I can see for it would be better done by animating a model.

-Av-