Mesh Joint Manipulations

I have a an idea where i want to create a mesh, and manipulate it using bones in Blitz3d. I want to be able to allow the user to lift the arm, or effect only a small portion of the mesh, and effect other areas like swinging a foot to kick (without the arm dropping).

I searched through the forums for something, and i have read in a few places where people are looking for somethign similar, but they use animations to solve this. I really dont want to do 100+ animations that can only be executed one at a time.
ie.. animation 1 = leg lifts, leg drops
then animation 2 = arm lifts and arm drops



So far i have been using straight MD2 animations one after each other, but i am really looking at independant joint manipulations. Is there a tutorial on this, and better question 'Is this possible?'


Any help would be great .

It is certainly possible. What you describe, manipulating joints in code, is at least half the point of skeletal animation.

You create a b3d model with a skeleton and make note of the joint names. Then use FindChild to attach a handle to the joints you want to manipulate and use the normal entity movement commands (eg. RotateEntity.)

SHAWEEEET.
jhocking. I very much appreciate the help.

Just on a point of reference. Is the rotation relative to the parent? or global?

prolly relative. and i think i will have to answer my own question. thx

As I said, you're just using the normal entity movement commands, so look them up. For example, read the documentation/command reference entry for RotateEntity; there's a flag to switch between global and relative.

Cool. Now i just have to figure out a way to set up IK. but im doubting that is possible

Perhaps this might be of some help.
Animation Blending: Achieving Inverse Kinematics and More
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20030704/edsall_01.shtml

thx second chance. article is very informative

Glad to be useful for once :)