A sad turn in the tale of 2 meka....

[cdxbow]

Flushed with success from the biped animations I turned my attentions to the meka. All went well, at first. I stripped mek#6 down and to make a modular mek#7, and using my now improved understanding of animating for the cube engine I went to work, it became modular. Weapons could be added either at the modelling stage or with tags by the engine. I could even churn out variations, easily. A meka factory..........

Even worked on another chassis, more upright. Added the torso and armor from a model by Julius.

Even the first exports loaded the first time. Splitting the mesh seemed to work. My luck was holding. Then I tried left/right. Mek 6 the whole body turned, and Mek 7 nothing turned. These are the same skeletons, animations and configs; so it is very confusing. They couldn't even have the grace to fail in the same way. That's where I have been stuck for a week.

[charlie]

I bet eihrul has the answer. Did you try to reach him?

[cdxbow]

I think it has to do with the way the models are made. I have the impression the 'root bone' is always turned to a particular orientation, I don't know if this is an engine or model thing. I know my wife always complain about the root bone pointing......

Sorry. Many models are made with the root bone as part of the main skeleton, usually the pelvis, so you cant turn the rest of the model on the root bone, you have to turn the whole model (and the root bone) and these seem to always turn back when rendered in the engine. This is the standard arrangement with models made with biped in Max. I have tried to illustrate it below.

Pelvis (root bone)--> spine --> arms, head etc
|
legs

Some models have the root bone seperate from the pelvis and in these the legs can be turned in Misfit and stay turned when rendered in the engine, in this case the skeleton is arranged like this.

root bone
|
pelvis ---> spine --> arms, head etc
|
Legs