Howdy guys, I've been having an issue lately that I'm sure can be solved, but I imagine it calls for a slightly more nuanced knowledge of the workings of FX than I posses. I'm building characters for various mods, attaching FX, and I keep running into a slightly annoying situation. When assigning a projectile or beam FX, it often won't leave from the proper point on the mesh, instead originating from a point off to the side. I've looked at the origin points in FFEdit for the particular FX, but they seem to be set up in a way that makes sense (a character with a bow uses an arrow FX set to leave at "weapon"). Changing them doesn't seem to produce a better result. Can anyone give me a little advice?
Well, the point off to the side is the weapon node. A few meshers never bother to animate that. I hate it but I usually animate it although I consider it one of the biggest hassles in meshing.
Ahh, I see. So, a better choice would be for me to point it at what node?
(http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a384/tommyboy2002/weapon_node.jpg)
See above.
Nothing much to do with the weapon node (though obviously it helps if its animated, I always physique it to the right hand in my meshes), quite a lot to do with how an fx is set up in the editor.
To spell it out, the above pic shows the same mesh using the same power and fx. Left pic, fx is set to start at weapon node, fx come out to the right of hand, (despite weapon node being linked to right hand).
Right pic, the editor is used to set the fx to use the Bip01 R Hand instead. Result? The FX shows up from the hand, as it should.
Not the mesher's fault.
Thanks for the explanation Tommy, that makes a lot of sense. Now I can tweak the effects I need.