Skeletal meshes. Maya to UnrealEd

Limitations

Although the techniques outlined in this tutorial will allow you to add animated gadgets and gizmos to your level, there are several limitations. This is a hack. With the SDK we will be able to do this properly.

First and foremost is the issue of the game crashing. Having to choose between the game crashing when your mesh is shot or having bullets and projectiles pass through it completely is, as we say in the trade, not ideal.

Furthermore, the game still thinks that the mesh is an R6MatineeRainbow actor. This actor has a huge amount of variables and properties which don't interest us at all. It is therefore much less efficient to use this method than to create a a dedicated animated decoration class. Unfortunately we don't have a choice.

Because the game thinks that the mesh is a character, you will see lots of errors in your game log about failing to play the various ambient animations such as looking around, picking nose and doing whatever it is elite operatives do when they aren't killing tangos. This is inefficient and annoying even if doesn't break anything.

Another Rainbow property shared by your mesh will be the armpatch glow. Your mesh will glow when viewed with night vision in co-op and single player games. I tried using a terrorist matinee actor instead of a Rainbow one and the game crashed. It looks like we're stuck with glowing clocks...

The issue of network compatibility and lag must raise its head too. I tested the clock by setting up a dedicated server on localhost and connecting to it. Experience with Unreal tournament has shown that if a mod works with this setup it should work over the internet. However I haven't tested this with a large number of players and I can't say whether there would be any adverse effect on maps. Feedback from mappers is needed.

With all that being said ... things that move are cool.

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