Model Dummies, a request to vehicle modders on behalf of script modders.
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This is a request to all modders creating vehicle mods, from me on behalf of script modders.
If a vehicle is supposed to have a dummy that applies to your vehicle, can you please add one?
One of the important things script modders rely on, is compatibility between vanilla models and modded ones. If we're working with Peds, we rely on a full skeleton, if we're working with vehicles, we rely on a set of vehicle bones. If items are missing, script mods can break.
I noticed this whilst testing my latest project that attaches cameras to vehicle bones. One vehicle was causing my camera to get lost in neverland and I had no idea why. When I checked the yft in OpenIV, there was no engine bone in the model.
Whilst you could accept that in a two door vehicle, there would be no door_dside_r or door_pside_r, it's hard to understand how any car could be without engine... all cars have them after all.
So if you're making a model where you don't get to see the engine for any reason, please add the dummy where the engine should be, or any generic dummy where they belong. If all of our mods work together, everyone gets a better experience with their/our mods.
Thank you.
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Good grief... that's about all I can say. This picture is a prime example of the problem... this is also the car with the missing engine incidentally.
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@LeeC2202 I agree. Unless one wants to make a vehicle that doesn't drown or catch engine damage
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Some modders take the easy way out of stuff and they just dont believe how bad that can break stuff. Back when we didnt have carcols.ymt unencrypted people would prefer to put the light dummies inside a solid part of the car so they would be hidden from a visible point for player camera...instead of picking whatever other car with access to carcols ID and Carvariations file and simply do a light setting for the car.
I try to keep my car mods as close as rockstar cars are, i can recall being wings dummies/bones that i sometimes delete because leaving them empty causes artifacts when crashing the car at very high speeds. Appart from that, im not removing, most times i add dummies that the car didnt have to make the car even more complete.
Really sorry scripters have to deal with this kind of nightmare
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@TobsiCred I think it's things like this that I find really hard to deal with and part of that is my background. When you've worked on the creation side of things, you know that every dummy/bone has a purpose, even if it's not apparent to the people on the other side of the fence. That sounds kind of arrogant and it's not meant to sound like that.
I mean, it's this kind of thing that makes me think "Should I just have an internal list of Vanilla cars and if the name doesn't match that list, it gets ignored?" and that's not how I am used to creating things. But at some point I have to think about how much of the backlash do I really want to take, when people say "Your mod doesn't work with this car, can you please fix it" and I get a rating that fits in with that.
I can't blame people for thinking it's my mod but when you see people posting comments on the author's page about these problems and they just get ignored, is it any wonder they choose to put the problem on the doorstep of someone they know will try and fix things? Although in the case of this vehicle, I can't fix those lights, nor can I add the engine dummy... so that means I have to consider building an exclusion list, for not only this but the rest of the models by the same author, just in case more are wrong.
As for controlling the bone positions, I'm not too sure on how you would script those things... I don't even know if you can set position properties on the bones/dummies, it's something I have never tried to do... maybe that's a test mod for the near future.
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@Vans123 I think the problem with all modding communities, is that there will be different levels of skill and ability. The problem from the scripter's side of things, is how much do you let those with lesser ability, dictate what you do?
Potentially, this problem I am highlighting here could effectively kill my current idea before it goes any further, because I have no idea of the scope of this problem. And that causes you to second-guess every decision you make about what mods are possible. I would now have serious doubts about doing anything else with vehicles, purely because I have no guarantee that 100% of the vehicles would work with it.
But it's not just the scripters that have the problem, it's the game as well, because those cars won't function according to the rules of the game so to speak. The annoying thing is that if there were tools for 3DS Max that meant I could avoid ZModeler3, I probably would be on the scripting side of things even less. Programming with an artist's mentality is hard enough, but this adds a whole new layer of difficulty on top.
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When i convert a car, first of all i choose a most similar default model (body shape and size, amount of doors and windows, etc.) to keep hierarchy close to original. But anyway, i have to remove some parts or dummies (for example, wings) or add new to get desired results on my model.
