3 replies to this topic

[temnix]

This is probably too confusing for anyone to have a clear understanding, but still... How do orientations of VVC files work? For one thing, what's the difference between "Follow target" and "Follow path"? In the case at hand, I'm making an animation with a creeping skeleton who, naturally, has to creep to characters' backs. I can adjust height in the BAM and position it for the best effect, but I still need to get the skeletons to approach from the right direction. The orienations of the fireball are limited to S to W, but they are correct in that range. I'm not getting the right cycles when I try to follow that logic, though, and arrange the cycles accordingly.

[Avenger_teambg]

The vvc field in question is a fake bitfield.

Only one bit has effect at a time, think of it as a radio button with the following values:

 

1 -face target - turns toward the location of the attached object, this may cause it to orbit around the target, overrides all else

2 -face target direction - copies the direction of the attached object, overrides 4 or 8

4 -face travel direction - copies the movement direction of the attached object, can't override anything else, may as well leave 0

8 -do not change - if set, overrides 4

 

Other fields, like face count / mirroring can affect the orientation.

[temnix]

Thanks for the answers, but I still can't get the BAM to play in front of the character in the direction he turns. It plays on top of him.

[temnix]

Since I asked the question, I think I should report for general benefit that the orientation of the animation turned out to follow the default pattern after all - clockwise, starting from S. There are 16 orientations in all. Projectiles can "mirror" them, so you only need one-quarter of cycles (look at FIREBALL.PRO and its BAM for an example), but with VVCs you have to fill out the whole compass. The 16 directions are are the 4 cardinal points and 3 in-betweens for each sector, like this: S, SWS, SW, WSW, W and so on. To have an animation play in front or behind a character, you need to adjust the position of the frames within the cycles. Luckily, you can halve the workload by doing just S through N, saving the BAM file under a different name, importing it and mirroring everything horizontally. Then you can merge the two BAMs, cut out the redundant N and S, and you'll have an entire circle.

 

Example: xvarts pursued by the "Follow target" Poltroonery VVC.