Props and multiple Bones, can anyone help with the hierarchy setup in Max?

[LeeC22]

I am trying to configure multiple props with multiple bones in each prop, that can be used as part of an attachment system. No matter what I try, the BoneIndex always returns -1, meaning I can't get the location of that bone.

 

I tried setting the bone IDs to 0, 1, 2 & 3 in max, that didn't work. I took the bone IDs from the stunt track cross and used those... that didn't work.

 

It's the first time I have worked with multiple bones in props and I jumped in thinking it was simple and fell flat on my face... nothing new there. If anyone has an idea and a few minutes spare, could they offer some assistance please?

[LeeC22]

Well here I am solving my own topic again. 

 

As usual, I will share the solution for the benefit of others. As I stated above, I already tried various methods of creating the bones, giving them names and IDs and building the prop hierarchy... nothing worked. Using existing IDs from other props failed, using IDs I randomly generated also failed.

 

Today I woke up with an idea in my head, so I created a test prop, added 3 bones, gave then the names of "Root", "Left" and "Right". I gave them bone IDs of 0, 1 and 2 and then exported the prop and ytyp etc... into my custom props dlc.

 

I wrote a small test mod and spawned the prop, then used this:

int _GET_ENTITY_BONE_COUNT(Entity entity) 0xB328DCC3A3AA401B

 

It displayed the number 3, meaning it had recognised the bones. I tried to get the bone Index  of "Root" and it returned -1, saying the bone didn't exist. However, getting the bone with the index directly, returned the correct position for the corresponding bone.

 

This is an image of the Max setup of my test prop for reference.

 

Attaching to the bone index still works fine as well.

 

Note: This is for a scripted attach/animation system, so I cannot confirm if this bone creation setup works for anything else, like YCD driven animation etc...

 

Edited January 19, 2021 by LeeC22