How To Customize A Vehicle
Well, I'm taking forever to finish it and a lot of people are asking how I did it, so I decided to make a vehicle tut. This is how I made my motorcycle
There are two ways to add models to a vehicle. The first is the one most people use when making a longsword or seraph: you give the vehicle a weap with the hlmt of whatever you want to add. For my motorcycle I gave the warthog's horn a wraith hlmt. Then you'll want to resize it by editing the bounding box in the mode tag. You can also lower it by lowering both the min and max z coords, since anything attached to the hog horn will appear above the hog. Alternately, you can go to the wraith's mode and lower the main bone.
Just so there's no confusion here, let me reiterate: You give the WEAP a new hlmt. You can replace the hlmt of a vehi (though you'll have to make adjustments with regards to the seat and whatnot) but you don't want to go into the hlmt tag and swap Modes as the mode is where the markers are contained and the hlmt will be looking for those markers.
Now we've got a warthog with a wraith stuck onto it, which is nice because the wraith is perfect for using the other method of adding: swapping *turrets. The wraith has three turrets (in the hlmt tag, click variation, unknown, turret and you'll find 3 dependecies): the mortar, left_minigun, and right_minigun. You can swap these for any vehicle you want. For my bike, I kept the mortar (it's a gas tank now) and swapped the turrets for pelican rocket pods. Then you'll want to find the vehicles turret markers (under the mode tag) and reposition them to whatever you'd like them to be. I rotated mine outward and positioned them on the sides of the bike (obviously I also resized the rocket pods). I also swapped the hog's turret for a ghost and lowered the **main bone by a bunch, so it left just the seat.
Those are the basics that I use for all my vehicles: the Raptor and Stingray, and the wip motorcycle.
Just FYI, for the motorcycle, I also nulled the hog's shaders except for the wheels, repositioned the wheels, and lowered it's ride height. I also broke the wings off of the wraith, and added brute shots to each of the rocket pods (as their weaps). I rotated the brute shots by going into their mode tag and rotating the main bone until I was happy with it. I also moved the wraith's hatch bone so it wasn't wide open (but left it open a bit, 'cuz I thought it looked cool).
Progress is being made on the phmo tag (and hopefully the coll tag soon as well) so I hope in the near future to be able to give custom vehicles full collision, but for now my bike has the collision of a warthog.
* It should be noted that turrets do not bring their phmo (walking collision and bsp collision) with them, though they do bring their coll (bullet collision) This is most obvious in that the ghost can be destroyed off of the bike, making it look funny with no seat. Giving a weap a hlmt brings neither the phmo nor the coll.
** There are two ways to move a model's bone (if you have a plugin that will do it). The coords closer to the top will move the bone and any children bones it has. It will also take the coll (but not the phmo) and markers with it (though I think all markers are attached to the main bone). the second set will only move the bone itself, leaving the children bones where they were. It will not take the coll or the markers with it.
[EDIT] It was just pointed out to me that I didn't include any information on removing bones (warthog wheels, wraith wings, etc). To do this, go to Insolence, to the mode tag, then click bones (same for moving bones as I mentioned above). You'll notice that there are things that say "parent bone, child bone and sibling bone." A value of -1 is a null in this case. You'll notice that the first one, number 0 (the hull in the case of most vehicles) has a -1 for its parent. To remove the hog's wheels or suspension you'll want to select them and change their parent to -1. I'm always thorough and I go to the parent and change it's child to -1 and I do the siblings as well, but I'm told all you need to do is change the parent.
On the subject of bones, these are where animations take place. For example, anything made a child of one of the warthog's suspensions will move with it, no matter where on the model (or floating in the air) it is. Each suspension arm has an engine at the end which controls steering. Any child of this bone will pivot when the hog steers. Any child of the tires (they have no child by default, but I experimented once and made one of the engines a child to a wheel) will spin with the tire.
Well, I'm taking forever to finish it and a lot of people are asking how I did it, so I decided to make a vehicle tut. This is how I made my motorcycle
There are two ways to add models to a vehicle. The first is the one most people use when making a longsword or seraph: you give the vehicle a weap with the hlmt of whatever you want to add. For my motorcycle I gave the warthog's horn a wraith hlmt. Then you'll want to resize it by editing the bounding box in the mode tag. You can also lower it by lowering both the min and max z coords, since anything attached to the hog horn will appear above the hog. Alternately, you can go to the wraith's mode and lower the main bone.
Just so there's no confusion here, let me reiterate: You give the WEAP a new hlmt. You can replace the hlmt of a vehi (though you'll have to make adjustments with regards to the seat and whatnot) but you don't want to go into the hlmt tag and swap Modes as the mode is where the markers are contained and the hlmt will be looking for those markers.
Now we've got a warthog with a wraith stuck onto it, which is nice because the wraith is perfect for using the other method of adding: swapping *turrets. The wraith has three turrets (in the hlmt tag, click variation, unknown, turret and you'll find 3 dependecies): the mortar, left_minigun, and right_minigun. You can swap these for any vehicle you want. For my bike, I kept the mortar (it's a gas tank now) and swapped the turrets for pelican rocket pods. Then you'll want to find the vehicles turret markers (under the mode tag) and reposition them to whatever you'd like them to be. I rotated mine outward and positioned them on the sides of the bike (obviously I also resized the rocket pods). I also swapped the hog's turret for a ghost and lowered the **main bone by a bunch, so it left just the seat.
Those are the basics that I use for all my vehicles: the Raptor and Stingray, and the wip motorcycle.
Just FYI, for the motorcycle, I also nulled the hog's shaders except for the wheels, repositioned the wheels, and lowered it's ride height. I also broke the wings off of the wraith, and added brute shots to each of the rocket pods (as their weaps). I rotated the brute shots by going into their mode tag and rotating the main bone until I was happy with it. I also moved the wraith's hatch bone so it wasn't wide open (but left it open a bit, 'cuz I thought it looked cool).
Progress is being made on the phmo tag (and hopefully the coll tag soon as well) so I hope in the near future to be able to give custom vehicles full collision, but for now my bike has the collision of a warthog.
* It should be noted that turrets do not bring their phmo (walking collision and bsp collision) with them, though they do bring their coll (bullet collision) This is most obvious in that the ghost can be destroyed off of the bike, making it look funny with no seat. Giving a weap a hlmt brings neither the phmo nor the coll.
** There are two ways to move a model's bone (if you have a plugin that will do it). The coords closer to the top will move the bone and any children bones it has. It will also take the coll (but not the phmo) and markers with it (though I think all markers are attached to the main bone). the second set will only move the bone itself, leaving the children bones where they were. It will not take the coll or the markers with it.
[EDIT] It was just pointed out to me that I didn't include any information on removing bones (warthog wheels, wraith wings, etc). To do this, go to Insolence, to the mode tag, then click bones (same for moving bones as I mentioned above). You'll notice that there are things that say "parent bone, child bone and sibling bone." A value of -1 is a null in this case. You'll notice that the first one, number 0 (the hull in the case of most vehicles) has a -1 for its parent. To remove the hog's wheels or suspension you'll want to select them and change their parent to -1. I'm always thorough and I go to the parent and change it's child to -1 and I do the siblings as well, but I'm told all you need to do is change the parent.
On the subject of bones, these are where animations take place. For example, anything made a child of one of the warthog's suspensions will move with it, no matter where on the model (or floating in the air) it is. Each suspension arm has an engine at the end which controls steering. Any child of this bone will pivot when the hog steers. Any child of the tires (they have no child by default, but I experimented once and made one of the engines a child to a wheel) will spin with the tire.
