TVActor Bone Manipulation

[jmaddox]

We're going to have a number of human models in our project.  I want to load skeleton keyframes independent of a model in order to save both memory and large amounts of artist work.  I also want to animate a model's legs and torso/arms/head separately.  TVActor doesn't support either of these things, so I need to use functions like SetBoneRotationMatrix.

Unfortunately, I just can't get any of the functions to work, nor can I even tell how they work from observation; so I can't tell if they're broken or if it's something I'm doing wrong.  After trying probably five different approaches, I wrote a complete skeletal animator for one specific model and set up some sphere meshes to display at the hand-calculated bone endpoints.  When I look at the spheres, everything seems fine.  When I look at the model being animated, it distorts horribly no matter how I set the bone matrix, bone rotation matrix, or bone global matrix.

I know y'all are still working on the documentation, but I'd really appreciate a little help with these functions:

CTVActor::SetBoneMatrix
CTVActor::SetBoneRotationMatrix
CTVActor::SetBoneGlobalMatrix
CTVActor::SetBoneTranslation

Specifically: What exactly do they do (beyond "setting the bone matrix")?  Which functions (including those not listed here) should I be using to achieve my goal?  How am I supposed to use them?  What, if anything, do I need to propagate down the bone chain using these TV3D functions?

I've been working on this for *weeks* and am getting the feeling it's just a colossal waste of time.  I'd really appreciate being pointed in the right direction.  Thanks.

Jim

[bbence]

Have you tried calling Actor.Update after you've set those matrices?