Question about Val Spears, Pole Axes etc.

Scoopey

Hi there,
Very simple question this but does anyone know what the value is of the "built" in rotations with Val Spears/ Pole Axes etc.
They are parented to M4/V4 hands and aligned accordingly. This works great until you try to use the weapon on another character, rotate the weapon in the characters hands or move the relative hand position down the shaft, at which point the built in rotations suddenly become annoying as it involves lots of tedious repositioning.
I was therefore considering parenting such weapons to a null at the weapons origin but for the best results I really need to know the rotational values so I can zero the weapon out (rotation and movement would thus be on the null).

Regards Steve C

Richard Haseltine

One option may be to align a null to the spear, then parent the spear to that and use the null (which should have axes aligned with the spear) to do your positioning. In DS you might be able to figure the angles out with Measure Metrics, using the polygon targeting, but I haven't tried that.

Scoopey

I was working on that null theory!
It is tricky to zero out the angles. I did discover that in the Val Spears different spears load at slightly different angles which is even more irritating.
Ahhhhhh!!!

Scoopey

Well I got it to work (using twin nulls) and once set up correctly one null moves the weapon into the correct position on the hand and the other can rotate the spear along it length or slide it through the hand.
I even managed to find a way of identifying misalignment issues and fixing them.
I make make the helper available as a freebie later....as soon as I've done the Readme!!!!

Richard Haseltine

Glad you got it sorted, and thank you for planning to share - I know you aren't the first person to run into this so that should be a benefit to may.

Scoopey

Best thing about this helper is you can use weapons that were originally set up for left or right hand (any generation) and swap them over!
So long as they are cylindrical it works!!.
Swords don't really work although it can make adjusting them easier if set up for the wrong character...

I now have a G2F Wachiwi character with a poleaxe.
use one of the BWC Native American Spear poses.
Apply my alternate "Poleaxe" hand grip pose.
Then I can move the poleaxe to where I want in her hands and rotate the blade to face her opponent...

Also helps prevent the back of the poleaxe burying itself in the ground in a standing up pose

I've done the read me/instructions so I'll shareCg it later today

SpottedKitty

Interesting. Does it help any with long objects like spears, that have been aligned diagonally from corner to opposite corner of their bounding boxes instead of parallel to the long edges? I keep coming across this in otherwise great-looking sharp pointy things, and it makes them a bit tricky to use in anything other than the basic "grab" pose.

Jaderail

SpottedKitty said:

Interesting. Does it help any with long objects like spears, that have been aligned diagonally from corner to opposite corner of their bounding boxes instead of parallel to the long edges? I keep coming across this in otherwise great-looking sharp pointy things, and it makes them a bit tricky to use in anything other than the basic "grab" pose.

Pretty sure this is exactly what is being talked about. Neat Idea. I often just Re-set the Rotation point to what I need.

Which of course means Re-Saving the Item and Parenting it again. This sounds faster.