can i instance a piece of a prop in ds?

Mistara

the Funland is one big piece. i want move the ice cream cones around for the camera framing in thirds rule.

Richard Haseltine

You could probably turn it into a figure, then use the Polygon group editor to select the cone (with luck selecting one polygon, then pressing ctrl-* would grab the whole thing), assign it to a group, and assign that group to a bone. Just a sec and I'll do a quick walk through.

Richard Haseltine

Select the item, assuming it's a single prop, and go to Edit>Object>Rigging>Convert Prop to Figure, uncheck the inherit from parent option and name the root node - ground, here.

Richard Haseltine

Tools>Polygon Group Editor, select a polygon on the cone by clicking and dragging. Press ctrl and * to select all of the connected polygons. If that doesn't select the whole thing hold down shift, click on an unselected part, and again press ctrl-*; keep going until the whole of a single cone is selected.

Right-click in the viewport and from the menu select Polygon Assignment>Create face group, then enter a name for the cone. Click Accept

Richard Haseltine

Tools>Joint Editor. Make sure the ground bone is selected. Right-click in the Viewport and select Create>Create Child Bone..., enter a name and label, ignore the rotation order since you aren't wanting anything but translation (if you did want to make it rotatable yxz would be best, since it would spin around its vertical axis).

With the new child bone selected, go to the Tool Settings pane and set the Selection group to Cone1 (or whatever you called the cone group).

Now in order for translation to work you need to have all of the rotation maps set: your polygons should still be selected, and maps assigned, so all you need to do is go to Tools>Node Weight Map brush, highlight the XRotation map in the Tool Settings pane, right-click in the viewport and select Fill Selected faces..., then set the value to 100. Repeat for the Y and Z rotation maps. You should then be able to translate your cone around the scene.

Mistara

thanks for typing all that. :)

well, this will be a weekend project.