I'm making a set of new animated clocks I (clock hands animation) like the game clock that works. I assumed that if you cloned that clock then your new clock would automatically animated like the game clock, but I know now that is not correct.

For one thing, my clock isn't even showing up in-game. For some reason, it is invisible. I don't know what is going on. I thought I did everything right, but it is still invisible. Why is that happening? The groups are reversed for the game clock (group_0 is the actual mesh, and group_1 is the shadow thing), so that is what I did with my mesh, but it still isn't showing up in the game.

Also, I was told that in order for my clock hands to be animated like the game clock hands are, I need to assign them to appropriate joints. I don't think I've ever had to assign any joints when I made object meshes for the game. How can I find out how to do this? Are there any tutorials out there that show how to assign joints? I've looked, but I can't find any tutorials on how to assign the appropriate joints in order to make a clock's hands animated. If anyone could help, I would greatly appreciate it!

Assigning joints is pretty basic. Select the group you want assigned to a joint, select the joint in the joints tab, select assign. Just make note of which group is assigned to which joint when you first bring your mesh in. Some groups have parts assigned to multiple joints. This is not common, but it does happen. Doors are an example of this.

The group order is important, chances are quite good that if your mesh is invisible in game your groups are not in the order that the original object was. Not all objects have the shadow as group0, this is also very common for the groups to be mixed up. If your object itself doesn't appear in the catalog then you may have deleted or changed something in your package to prevent, or you have it open in s3pe.

I apologize for not answering your message sooner RC, today has just been hectic for me. To see which joints are assigned where you select a joint by double-clicking on the first line in the joints panel and then hitting the "Sel Assigned" button. The blue dot indicating that joint should turn red in your view panel. Then you move on to the other joints.

If you haven't assigned joints at all it may be, that since this is an animated object, that this is why it's turning up invisible in the game. Other people have had a similar experience when using animated objects that didn't have joints assigned.

Which clock is it that you've cloned?

HugeLunatic: My mesh appears in the catalog. It just shows up invisible when you select it and try to put it on the wall. I can tell that it is selected, but it's invisible.


Orange: Ok, so that is why it isn't showing up. I cloned the "Clock Wall Contemporary".

Again, assigning joints may fix that. Give that a try first and if it doesn't work to fix the invisibility thing we'll need to look elsewhere for the issue.

OM

Ok, thanks. Hopefully I will be successful.

If you using the wall clock:

0x257E78E0 is the minute hand bone
0xCD68F001 is the main bone
0x4EE4847A is the hour hand bone

To make it easier on myself when I made a clock, I didn't group anything until after I assigned the bones. For example, each hand was it's own group, so I could assign them, then join them with the clock body group.

Thanks Cmomoney. I see the joint assignments now. I have all parts of my clocks in its own group. Thanks everyone for the help. I think I can do this now, lol.


EDIT: Yes, it works! Thanks! :D