Heavy with back sheath melee weapon

[SickAlice]

I'm looking for a heavy (or hulking, their interchangeable anyways) mesh that already exists that has a melee weapon sheathed on the back (dummy, ect.) that they pull out and use during specific combat animations, while the rest of the animations they fight with their fists, or for anyone to join up with me on this project (it will be for the Skaar request on this board, but I can think of more uses down the road) since I, well you know, suck at keyframes >.> I thought such a mesh existed, like Bloodaxe, or another swordswinging heavy guy, but I can't find any that do anything but hold the weapon in their hand at all times. An example of the animation I'm talking about would be Gren's recent and perfect Ares mesh currently hosted over at Champions Of Freedom (great site BTW!), except of course that's not on a heavy. My best guess here was to try and alter the Bishop mesh since it's conformed to heavy, but it has no melee weapons, only firearms. Any help would be appreciated and anyone is awesome without asking. Thanks.

[Randomdays]

I haven't been around much in the last few months with real life really taking my time, but I see this as doable. With Blender I could take something like Gren's Ares that you mentioned, and remove the mesh leaving the armature and addons. Import a heavy mesh only, resize the armature to heavy size and then rig the mesh to it. as long as no one minds me doing it, it would probably take a couple of days to do with my schedule. I'll look around just to see if anything is already out there that might work also.

It should work with any prexisting heavy skin when done.

Of course, someone might pop in with what you need before then, and that's good too.

[detourne_me]

I can think of a few male_heavy based ones...  Gni's Lobo mesh, and his Barbarian dude (from Heavy Metal) mesh, and Jik's Space Marine meshes have swords on their legs.
They are skopable for male heavy meshes as i combined Gni's Lobo into Jik's Space Marine mesh.

[detourne_me]

Hmm... After Looking at Gni's Ghorgor Bey (the barbarian dude i mentioned) again.. he's more of a male_hulking size, and even the the bones are a bit different from a normal male_hulking.
Also keep in mind that when you skope Gni's meshes, you have to change the names of some nodes, from French to English (Scene Principale -> Scene Root)

[SickAlice]

Thanks for the potentials. I'll give them a look. I don't tend to work with Gni's stuff often since I don't know the language (silly I know, I do recognize the node locations). Mesh size doesn't matter again, I would be moving a new body in anyways, or I might skope the right nodes and pieces onto one of Ren's Hulk's so Skaar can have those Hulk animations if it's possible.

[detourne_me]

that totally works.  i just did a quick skope to test.
put the hache node (hachet) from Gni's Ghorgor Bey into theright hand of a hulk mesh, and gave hime the chopping keyframes,  they work,, with a little distortion, and the mesh goes 90 degrees,  but that probably because i used a FFVTTR nif for the hulk mesh, not a FF nif.

[SickAlice]

I followed your lead. Mine was Ghorgor Bay+Ren's Hulk. I got major distortion, the mesh turned as did yours, and stretched out really huge.
I also tested out a ff1 Ghorgor, and a converted. As well since I want the back dummy I tried Ares against both Ren's Hulk, and against
Male Hulking Brute. The animations don't appear in Ren's, Hulking Brute crashes. Still some progress on this front, and I think you definitely
solved some riddles on a few other things I'm working on with what you taught me today.

@Randomdays: This sounds interesting. I'm working with Blender a but lately. I'm a real novice, at this point all I can do is alter an existing mesh body (female_basic, male_basic, male_heavy, ect) and then skope the new piece into another mesh. I don't know how to add attachments otherwise via Blender, nor at all how to rig a mesh. Is there a tutorial you'd recommend? And I have no objections here, I'd be totally stoked if you did that.

[Randomdays]

I wrote up a Blender tutorial back in the the beginning of the year and posted it. It's at

http://freedomreborn.net/forums/index.php?topic=55261.0

I haven't done much with the game lately but started getting back into it again a couple of weeks ago.. I'll look at rigging the male heavy over to the Ares armature. Do you need the final in FF of FFVTTR?

[Randomdays]

Done - as well as I was able. Removed all of the extras from Gren's Ares except for the axe and knife. Replaced the main mesh with a male heavy. Readjusted the axe to its proper position after the changeover, but couldn't get the knife moved back into his hand, so it needs tweaking.

Since Ares had a chaingun on his left hand, you might want to swap out the idle kfs and a few others since his left arm is not in the standard position.

Since I was able to use the same vertex groups after resizing, it was fairly quick. Let me know if you want to try it on a different mesh.

Converted for FF1. Tested in character tool and in game and seemed to be okay.

Located in the temp directory in my Yahoo group

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/FF_Swap_Shop/

[SickAlice]

Very awesome, thank you. And thank you from anyone else who finds this useful.
And more so from me for the tutorial, I'm reading through it and going to give a few things a shot soon.

* noting the keyframes that have the gun hold still on, it seems that an attempt to introduce a different keyframe causes a glitch where the axe floats around in air by the mesh instead of staying hidden. There probably is specific information in every one of the original keyframes that determines both 1. where the gun is held at the time 2. if the dummy axe is visible in hand or on the back. Likewise there really aren't any keyframes to switch in the original set (ie; no additional or similar flying, walking, running, hovering, jumping, ect.). The axe only appears the first time in the idle sequence, then hides and all of the other keyframes meld with that sequence as they should (this was the idle sequence from the classic standard male_basic set). I resolved this issue by copying the Ares melee_idle, and renaming it to idle, but left the idle copied from male_basic in as idle2 (so it's information would still be present and the other keys will still run into it, thereby removing the gun hold, but never running into the initial glitch anim). It also looks more presentable then the male_basic idle looked anyways. That made the poor polygonal man look like he had to go to the bathroom and was really embarrassed, lmao. The gun hold is present in some animations yet, but it's not as obnoxious anymore, or looks like it could just be there naturally for the most part. I upped the keys to a temp file for you, or anyone else who might be able to figure out how to get it farther along.
http://catman.freedomforceforever.com/temp/modifiedRDkeys.rar
Otherwise I'm really impressed with your knowledge here, and I think this will come together nicely. Looking fore ward to anything you cobble up.
I just found out I'm bedridden again starting in a week so...well, yeah, I'll have tons of time for Freedom Force now, lol.

[Randomdays]

Thanks for the compliment - still learning but getting a bit better.

Before you get locked in on using the Ares for your base, take a look at the male_hunter @ http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/Freedomforcemesh1/files/

and Gren's Deathstroke @ http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/Grenadiermeshes4/

Both have an over the shoulder sword and since deathstroke is also by Gren, maybe you can use those kf's for swapping.

If you like either, I can try converting them over to heavy as well.

[SickAlice]

I wouldn't mind, either would have a use one way or another. I can tell you speaking of that Deathstroke mesh and keyframes are really testy though. I'm using that for a different character and I tried making it so a sword would draw in and out of both hands rather than just one, but that thing just does not like deviations for some reason. In Skaars case, the Ares mesh is closer to a Hulk in the rest of the keys though, being that they are more the brawler type. I may end up sticking with that for him and just doing that swap trick for several animations by it's end.