How to get rocking grooves and such WITH AN ANGLE
Usually whathever you try to get a component rocking
around an axe with an angle will result in terrible failure. The game
just doesn't want it to happen.
Here's how to force it.
Let's
take the steering wheel as an example. Create it and place it normaly
in your model with the angle etc. Be sure to make it a separate
component though.
When you're ready to go into PT2 duplicate the
steering wheel component and rotate it so that you remove completely
the angle and align the steering wheel with one of the X,Y,Z axis.
Remember the angle you needed to make it parallel with one of the axes
as it will be used to give that angle back to the steering wheel
through a groove. So keep the model like it, with two steering wheels
at the same position but with a different angle. And export to PT2 and
continue your work.
In PT2 don't try to make the steering wheel a
correct actor (a correct actor is centered on 0,0,0) just let it there
as we'll use absolute coords later to specify its center. However in
PT2 create an empty dummy as a child of the steering wheel then
drag it back under the master component and put the steering wheel
inside it. Rename the dummy ST_DUMMY.ACT or something obvious. Oh BTW
you can delete the steering wheel in correct position.
Now calculate
the absolute center of the aligned steering wheel, or at least it must
be the point around which the steering wheel was rotated to make it
parallel with the X/Y/Z axis.
Then use these grooves:
STWHEEL.ACT -> This groove is applied on the SW mesh. It's the usual rocking groove.
not a lollipop
constant
no path
rock
absolute
20
-0.127,0.187,-0.948 -> The center coord around which the SW was rotated.
z
0
NEXT GROOVE
ST_DUMMY.ACT -> This groove is applied at the parent dummy. It gives the angle back.
Not a lollipop
Constant
No path
Rock
Flash
-1
-0.127,0.187,-0.948 -> The center coord around which the SW was rotated.
x -> Axis that will get the angle back.
60 -> The opposite of the angle you used to align the SW with one of the XYZ axis.
It's easy to do little mistakes with the angle but it's quickly fixed. If you wanna see that trick used. Test the General Lee or the Sor BN12.
Don't forget to add the groovyfunkref (here it's the number 20 in the first groove chunk) in the text file as well.