[quote:ih0cwitz]@gamecorpstudio wrote:
wait so we can use the monster morph animation tutorial, characters that is already from q3d, just swap the model ? and keep the same animation of movement!? i mean bones or what contains?! just change the shape of model basically?! that will be so awesome, cause it solves most of problems, just wold need to have a same size character, and then bam new characters every time!
Well, sort of. I think you could do what you're thinking, as long as you use the same rigged model as the base for all of the morph-animated characters. But you would have to use the same number of vertices--just shift them around while still having them attached to the same bones containing the same rigged animations that you would share between different versions of that model. I've never altered a model after rigging it, so I'm not even sure how that would be done (although I have added objects to the model after it has been morph-animated; and that's information that I'm going to put in the tutorial above). For re-shaping a rigged character, I think you would either have to use Shape Keys to shift the vertices around, or you could detach the bones from the vertices, shift the vertices around to create the new character, add a new material/texture, then re-parent the model to the bones, creating vertex groups, etc. That way the character would look different, but it would be animated the same.
The process I was talking about in my "edit" above is a way to resolve the problem of the morph-animated character carrying things in his hands, since an object can't be parented to a hand bone (because there aren't any bones). To test whether or not that could be done, I went back to my morph-animated character in Blender, added a cylinder to the scene, re-sized, rotated and positioned it in the character's hand, selected first the object and then the character, shifted to Edit Mode, selected three adjacent vertices in the character's hand--close to the cylinder--and pressed Control+P to parent the object to the vertices. Then I played the walk cycle and, sure enough, the cylinder moved (and rotated correctly) with the hand, as if he was really carrying it. At first I made the mistake of parenting the cylinder to a single vertex. It followed the hand when the character walked, but it refused to rotate. Parenting to three vertices "locks" the object into place, correcting the rotation problem.
The only thing I haven't tested, yet, is whether or not I can now join the object to the model, to make them one model--and still have the morph animation work the same way for the whole model. I just realized that (*gulp*). It seems that hierarchies that aren't armatures can't be exported in .json files. I forgot about that.
After I'm done writing this, I'll have to experiment with that. And I might have to put the tutorial on hold....
As for "swapping" out the two versions of the character model, I haven't yet tested it with the model carrying the cylinder. But I did swap between the original model and a duplicate, triggering it with a key press. I was pretty surprised by how seamless it was! I had to use a few conditions/actions in the Event Sheet, juggle a few Euler angles to get the new model to face in exactly the same direction as the first. All of that, I'll mention in my edit to the tutorial--exactly what actions I used.
You mentioned a character that is already in Q3D. Are you talking about the monsters created by 
QuaziGNRLnose? If you wanted to swap bodies with one of those creatures, you'd have to match one of their start or end poses as closely as possible, have one character end its animation cycle in a pose that begins the animation cycle of the second character, in order to make it look as natural as possible. In Unity, when a character dies, you can swap it out for a "ragdoll" version of the same character, matching each of its bones--position and rotation--with the bones of the destroyed character. Are you thinking of taking one of those Q3D monsters into Blender and altering its shape/texture? Because they're morph-animated (I think), you would have to capture their alterations with Shape Keys in every pose of the animation. Or maybe I'm not understanding your question?
Anyway, I realized I have a lot more experimenting to do before I can add to the tutorial....