How to use mount points in MilkShape models?
- by vividos
I have bought the Warriors & Commoners model pack from Frogames and the pack contains (among other formats) two animated models and several non-animated objects (axe, shield, pilosities, etc.) in MilkShape3D format.
I looked at the official "MilkShape 3D Viewer v2.0" (msViewer2.zip at http://www.chumba.ch/chumbalum-soft/ms3d/download.html) source code and implemented loading the model, calculating the joint matrices and everything looks fine.
In the model there are several joints that are designated as the "mount points" for the static objects like axe and shield. I now want to "put" the axe into the hand of the animated model, and I couldn't quite figure out how. I put the animated vertices in a VBO that gets updated every frame (I know I should do this with a shader, but I didn't have time to do this yet). I put the static vertices in another VBO that I want to keep static and not updated every frame.
I now tried to render the animated vertices first, then use the joint matrix for the "mount joint" to calculate the location of the static object. I tried many things, and what about seems to be right is to transpose the joint matrix, then use glMatrixMult() to transform the modelview matrix. For some objects like the axe this is working, but not for others, e.g. the pilosities.
Now my question: How is this generally implemented when using bone/joint models, and especially with MilkShape3D models? Am I on the right track?
