Greeting!
As the tile says, I am trying to make a plan for Animating the Stargate that I have made for the game my team and I am are making. Also it might help to know that this IS going to be a VR game. Here is a a picture of the gate, and a very small demo level of the gate, if you would like to see it.
There are 39 different symbols of the gate. The center ring that has all these symbols on it needs to spin, and align with the Chevrons located on the outer ring. Each symbol in the order it is pressed will align to a chevron, starting with the center one, and then alternating between ones to the right an left, until 7 chevrons are lit and engaged. This all happens when commanded to by the input device we call a DHD, after an “address” is entered, the process can be thought of like dialing a phone, and the stargate makes the connection. Here is a link to a video of the stargate doing what I need it to do(Sorry for all you that know what this is I am trying to describe. I didn’t want to make the assumption that everyone knows what Stargate is, and miss good help)
What I am looking for is advice for setting this up properly. I am using 3DSMAX for animating. Is there a way to do it all with Blueprint, or construction script? This is a very complicated animation, and I dont want to start off on the wrong foot. I would be willing to pay for some help if that is necessary, but I was hoping that someone would help me get this right for there love of Stargate :O)
In 3ds Max rig the gate that way you want to animate it then animate it. When you are ready to send over to UE4 set the export to bake keyframes and import it into UE4 just like any other skeletal rig but included animation as well as part of the import.
Do a bunch of different animations you can then stack them using a Montage if you wish and trigger it with a BP.
Oh thank you! So it really is much like I used with other game engines. How would you go about setting up the ring so that when in unreal it will move back ward or forward…I suppose I could make an animation of each, and then blueprint will choose based on which chevron it needs to light next? I just want to make sure I have a clear plan. While I have animated stuff before, I never had to do anything with them in the engine myself, so doing most everything, until we find an animator that is. Thank you very much for your help!
If you want to super size it so it all matches up on the dime based on an input and not as being scripted then of course you need a Blueprint and a few basic assets.
How I would do it just as an exercise in logic.
One you will need the ring rotating in a direction so that it loops. Speed or direction does not matter as you can change that in UE4.
Next you will need an animation of each chevron being activated in turn. The resource hit is so low you might as well do it using brute force so make a clip for each one. Since there are 7 chevrons then you will need 7 clips and best to number them from 1 to 7.
With that done make a 1D blend space (you could make a Montage as well I just find blend spaces easier to work with) and make the label Chevron_Trigger, the range from 1 to 7, division 7
This will give you 7 slots for each with an index value based on what needs to trigger that does not loop. So chevron 1 in slot 1 and so on. Need chevron 4 to fire just feed 4 into Chevron_Trigger and off it goes.
The next part gets a bit tricky as there is math involved depending on how fancy you really want but I like data drive set ups so (no need for the animation clip here) being an SG1 fan I would make a list set of each location of each chevron on the ring based on angle of degrees. 37/360 should be close. Do the same for each of the chevrons you want to trigger.
You now have a fixed address as to where things live and you can do a rotate by bone in the BP that says if chevron trigger = chevron ring then trigger. To match it up to the DHD they are just a button that you can assign the rotation address that can stack up as each is pushed and the gate does it thing (no need for a list in this case as it’s output value = the right address).
Thank you Mars I will try it out and let you know. Thank you FrankieV as well. I am hoping to learn as many ways to skin the cat as possible, making this run smoothly is my goal, and I think it will take a few tricks to get it done, this is a great start:O)
@FrankieV: There are many ways to accomplish this target. I´m sure your solution works as well.
I like blueprints, because i can handle everything in one blueprint and reuse it with one mouse click as often as i like.
Short description of the Stargate Blueprint:
Input your DHD-Adress (7 Numbers)
The ring rotates to each adress and activates the chevron (just a simple light-effect).
At the end the blueprint activates the wormhole-effect (a simple noise-material).
