rujuro on 4/7/2005 at 21:16
Does anyone know how this works? Is there a special naming convention for the artist collision mesh? How does this get exported? Thanks to anyone who can shed some light.
EDIT: Think I figured it out, using the script that is mentioned in the readme: CollisionMaker
Seems that you need a dummy that is a child of the static mesh called Collision, then a dummy that is the child of that called either High Detail or Low Detail, don't know if you need both. Then the collion mesh is the child of that dummy.
My results are still wierd, however, so I'm going to wait until I've ironed it out to Wikki it.
rujuro on 4/7/2005 at 23:02
OK, I thought I had figured it out, but I was WRONG. I have no idea how this is supposed to work. It continues to behave like a convex hull, even when I explicitly export my own artist generated mesh in the place where the convex collsion mesh would be in Max.
str8g8 on 5/7/2005 at 08:06
I had the same problems - I dodn't manage to fix it though :(
Another piece of the puzzle is in the you can check "artist generated" collision in the static mesh browser ... but you probably already saw that ...
Let me know if you figure this out!
cheers
str8g8
Ziemanskye on 5/7/2005 at 10:51
Are you still using CollisionMaker when you create your own? I think it creates the shrinkwrap convexhull thing... Maybe it's just overwriting/ignoring what you made.
str8g8 on 5/7/2005 at 11:04
I made mine by running the script (which created the dummies and stuff named above) and then replacing the hull with a custom mesh, making sure the name was identical to the script generated mesh.
Possibly there are meshes which the are rejected as collision hulls - for instance they usually have to be concave, solid (ie not have any holes) and so on.
Or possibly I didn't hierarchy them in the correct way. :erg:
rujuro on 5/7/2005 at 15:42
I worked on this for a little while longer. I did find that the parents in the hierarchy have notes in the User Defined section of the object properties. The Collision dummy has COLL written there, the Low Detail has COLO, and the High Detail has COHI (i think I'm getting those right). However, none of this changed the fact that it still treats my mesh as a convex hull, even though it is clearly not.
I think there must be a way to make concave artist generated collision meshes to work for 2 reasons:
1. Krypt said so specifically at one point when I asked (although he wasn't an artist, so I won't hold it against him if he didn't know).
2. Some of the meshes in the static mesh browser have artist generated checked, and would never work if they were completely convex (look at some of the curved stairs with railings).
Shadowspawn on 5/7/2005 at 19:20
rujuro,
You could try using my TimtoE program to dump your mesh to .E format, and then use the newest version of Eto3DS to make it a 3DS file. Then view it.
I separate out the collision hull as an object named "Collision". You could take a look at it and see if it's what you think it should be. Maybe MAX is making a mistake exporting it?
rujuro on 5/7/2005 at 19:38
That is a wonderful idea. That would help a ton, in fact it is exactly what I was wishing I had last night. Is there a link via the Wikki?
Nevermind, I there is :D . BTW, is there anything in the TIM format that you saw that might indicate the way it is marked to be used by the MAX converter? Any particular hierarchy information or names? Just hoping for any clues.
rujuro on 6/7/2005 at 01:42
Well, it just gets stranger, I opened my tim file, and it looks perfect. The collision mesh is exactly like the one I built, all lined up and everything. Not sure what the deal is at this point.
rujuro on 6/7/2005 at 02:16
[This is all wrong, preserved for posterity]Think I've got it, looks like the collision mesh MUST be convex, if not I think the engine throws it out and wraps it in a convex hull. When I looked at some of the stranger geometry using the TIM converter, I found that most of them didn't have collision meshes, even though they were marked as artist generated. I think if we were to explore these more thoroughly in game, we'd see they don't really display exact collision at all, but collide beyond where you'd expect.[end wrong]
EDIT: Nope, wrong again! I checked a particularly thorny mesh STMstairsspiralC-rail2.tim, a spiral railing, definitely CONCAVE. It is marked as artist generated, when I convert it I get NO collision mesh, just a point cloud, but in game the collisions behave perfectly...
Shadowspawn, any ideas?? This will drive me MAD.
I'm giving up for now. Just don't have enough info for this, it's a bit of a problem, because I think it's hitting my framerate, but it'll just have to wait.
