Problems Animating Children

Hi there, I've searched the forums and cannot find the answer to these problems:

I LoadAnimMesh an entity (B3D mesh) inside a custom type. Then I make the mesh the child of another entity within that type. I try Animate entity, and get nothing. If I do everything except declare the parent of the first mesh, Animate works fine. After further testing it seems that any animated mesh given a parent cannot be animated at all.

Also related: I cannot get cameras set as children of other entities to respond to CameraViewport commands.

Could these be B3D limitations? Thanks for your help...

I've never actually tried the stuff you describe, but those limitations all make sense to me.

So, is there no way to animate a mesh, or view a camera, attached to a bone?

A workaround would be to move the mesh to the bone's position and orientation every frame instead of actually parenting it.

Are you animating the parent or the original entity? I have found that in Blitz animated children, specifically skinned meshes, must be animated explicitly (you have to call Animate on the parent and any animated children).

For example, the B3d Pipeline Viewer keeps track of each of the animation "roots" (or subanims) in a hierarchy and animates each of them individually.

-Pudding