--Planet AvP | Articles | Model Butes Overview

Model Butes Overview Model butes are primarily used for hit-tracking (just make sure you read the butes file before editing!), but they help in identifying what part of the body on the skeleton gets what animation when hit, as well as how much damage and explosion effects a body part has. The really tough part about model butes, is that if you have a character model with many skeleton nodes, you would have to make sure you list each one in order, pertaining in a parent-child relationship (which I would show later in a sample). In modding cases, it could really add up a lot of hours of pure text-editing to get the skeleton written in right. (Bleh!) Fortunately, I found there are two ways of using it and have it work: the proper way, and the sloppy way (which I would tell after the proper way, 'cause it is needed to understand how to fudge it). The Proper Way (At least how I see it!) 1. The first thing to do is get out a sheet of paper and list down in a tree method, how the skeleton nodes within 3DsMax are linked up (in a parent-child method). This is important when you have lots of nodes to deal with, and you got a bit of typing to do, note that each node has to be assigned a number, just look at the harris's skeleton listing for example. 2. Ok, now just to jump into it.... create a new entry for the skeleton section of the model butes... It is easier to just copy one of the other model's skeleton listings and just edit it, (just make sure you edit names to make it work) also, make sure you change the skeleton name not the name in the '[]' text. 3. Next up: node name editing. Of course, there are many ways to do this, but I am just gonna list my method... go down the new entry and replace all the node names first, just make sure the node names match the skeleton nodes within model edit. 4. Now, the next thing I do is replace the names of the piece nodes - piece nodes tell the the engine what nodes are connected to what mesh pieces, and for greater accuracy in hit detection. 5. After that, look at Node Parent, and this is what I do next: this is used by lithtech to link up all the bones within the engine (and is important). To link up a node, you would have to use the number that is right next to name of the batch of attributes for the other node... Soooo... lets say you have a spine node and you want to attach it to the pelvis... The pelvis node attributes are numbered 0, so for the node parent I would put 0. And leave it at that. The pelvis node is connected to nothing, so I would put -1 in for the node parent (which means it doesn't have a parent). Not bad? Heh, do it for 50 some nodes - biped has around that much. Advertisement It's really important that you get this part right or you'll crash the engine. 6. After you get the node parents done, you are pretty much free to custom the rest on your own time (the few things that do crash the engine, are listed). The rest are just explosion FX for the limbs, which are pretty self explanatory: listing death animations, which animation goes to which limb, etc. That's about it for the proper way. Now to get sloppy! To get a model quickly punched out with some sort of hit-tracking and such, just list the nodes you need. Like let's say you want just the head and torso; just list them only, and you would not need to do the legs or arms (though they would only use the default death animation). Now, 6 nodes are way easier to list and make sure they work then 50. And for modest mod developers, if you only have a few death animations, this works fine. By TimmyG Comments? Flames? Praise? Mail feedback!