OK so hear me out, there are TONS of awesome weapon props out there, most of them even come with body groups for attachments and extra parts, but the props aren't really animator friendly, since it's still a static prop and half of them don't joint the moving parts of a gun.
So would it possible to make a gun prop that uses faceposer for the moving parts, such as the slides, bolts and rotating barrels?
Why faceposer in particular? Well, a lot of the animation tools available on GMod aren't joint tool friendly, but ARE set up for use with faceposer, such as stop motion helper V2.
Of course, I don't actually know shit about how to do this or to even model, but I submit this idea in hopes that someone who DOES know how to would experiment with it and see where it leads.
You can add flexes to anything, it doesn't have to be a face.
[QUOTE=Cheatman19;46990919]OK so hear me out, there are TONS of awesome weapon props out there, most of them even come with body groups for attachments and extra parts, but the props aren't really animator friendly, since it's still a static prop and half of them don't joint the moving parts of a gun.
So would it possible to make a gun prop that uses faceposer for the moving parts, such as the slides, bolts and rotating barrels?
Why faceposer in particular? Well, a lot of the animation tools available on GMod aren't joint tool friendly, but ARE set up for use with faceposer, such as stop motion helper V2.
Of course, I don't actually know shit about how to do this or to even model, but I submit this idea in hopes that someone who DOES know how to would experiment with it and see where it leads.[/QUOTE]
To be honest it's actually not a half bad idea imo.
Not a good idea. Flexes morph the mesh from the 'default' position to the flex's position pretty much directly, so for anything that rotates or moves in a non-linear fashion it's going to work incredibly poorly.
For example, let's say we make a flex for the trigger on a gun. If you use the flex to 'pull' the trigger, it's going to move the vertices from the original position to the flex file's position in a linear fashion, so if you set the flex to half-way, it's not going to have the trigger half-pulled, it's going to have it squashed and distorted mid-way between the default and flexed positions.
It's even worse if you have something that rotates like a door. Let's say we make an AR15's dust cover use a flex to open. The 'open' position is the end of the flex and the default position is 'closed'. If you move the slider, the dust cover will collapse through itself in order to move into the 'open' position. It won't flip open neatly like you'd hope it would.
For guns, vehicles, and anything that isn't a face, bones can do the job far better and you have way more control over them.
[QUOTE=FloaterTWO;46991198]Not a good idea. Flexes morph the mesh from the 'default' position to the flex's position pretty much directly, so for anything that rotates or moves in a non-linear fashion it's going to work incredibly poorly.
For example, let's say we make a flex for the trigger on a gun. If you use the flex to 'pull' the trigger, it's going to move the vertices from the original position to the flex file's position in a linear fashion, so if you set the flex to half-way, it's not going to have the trigger half-pulled, it's going to have it squashed and distorted mid-way between the default and flexed positions.
It's even worse if you have something that rotates like a door. Let's say we make an AR15's dust cover use a flex to open. The 'open' position is the end of the flex and the default position is 'closed'. If you move the slider, the dust cover will collapse through itself in order to move into the 'open' position. It won't flip open neatly like you'd hope it would.
For guns, vehicles, and anything that isn't a face, bones can do the job far better and you have way more control over them.[/QUOTE]
OK, I can see your point on that, but what if the part that was flexing wasn't visible, e.g with a bolt, it'd be the barrel flexing, so the flex point would be flexing under the frame of the gun, or with a trigger, the mesh that would be flexing could again be either within the handle, or the texture would seem invisible, would that work?
You misunderstand how flexes work.
A flex in the Source Engine is a morph target for the vertices of the base mesh to be moved to when you apply that flex. There is no 'flex point', when you apply the flex using the faceposer tool or whatever, it will move the vertices from the original position directly to the 'flexed' position, in a straight line. As I said, if you tried to use it on something like an AR15's dust cover then It'd collapse through itself in order to reach the 'open' position.
If you really, really wanted to, you probably could use it on things like triggers where the deformation between states is barely noticable, and on weapons where the bolt recoils straight backwards. It wouldn't work amazingly well, but probably decently enough for use with the tools you mentioned.
You'd likely have to ask people to make weapons specifically compatible for that, though. It's such a niche feature that it's not really worth adding to most weapon models.
Welp, great things have come from stupid ideas. If ya know anyone willing to give it a try, then let everyone else decide if it's worth, send 'em this way.
You'd be better off just using bone-merging for separate optional parts that are also animated.
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