"GetChild,FindChild,EntityPickMode"??

Hi all,

How to use "GetChild, FindChild, EntityPickMode"? Why?

Thanks in advance
Sammy
:)

Poor "Sammy" - been waiting 16 hours for an answer. To start the ball rolling:

I've never used 'GetChild' - I found it to be a bit hit and miss and never used it since.

I manually do my FindChilds by looking at the mesh in something like Ultimate Unwrap, etc - to get the names of the bones. You use it like this 'head_ent=FindChild(Entity,bone name)

So, 'head_ent' is whatever you want to call it - it could be 'head_player', or 'playerhead' (assuming the bone is a head) , whatever (just like naming an entity). The FindChild command takes the entity's name - ie the name you used to load it into Blitz - and the second paramater in quotes is the name of the bone.

So, if I had a zombie which I loaded in as 'zombie' and it had a bone called 'L_Thigh' - I'd use (for example) 'l_thigh_zombie=FindChild(zombie,"L_Thigh"). You are basically just creating a new entity reference out of an existing entity - sort of indexing to a particular bone.

You can automatically iterate through an entity to get its bones - but I don't do it as I found variable results in trying it, I find it easier to load it into a modelling package and make a note of the bones myself and manually do it.

EntityPickMode is a really big topic, coz there are tons of uses for it. You may have a working example with your installation though - there was a demo called 'Dungeon Trigger' in the 'Open DNA' folder in Blitz 3D Samples.

Hi puki,

The concept is clearer now.

Thanks for your tips.
Sammy
:)

This may help finding children without having to manually look:

http://www.blitzbasic.com/codearcs/codearcs.php?code=615


EDIT:
Also, use 'LoadAnimMesh' where applicable (and if applicable).

Hi puki,

Thanks a lot.

Sammy
:)