Attachments

You may noticed that Head model (in left hand) and RocketLauncher model (in right hand) dont change geometry at all with changing mipmodels. Explanation for that brings us to next powerfull feature called Attachment models. Attachment models are normal models as any (containing its own texture, mipmodels, animations, colision, animations and even its own attachment models). Attachment models can be used to create multipart models or to keep geometry count and memory usage down and to easily change parts of model without need to recreate all things from scratch (like texture, mapping, animations etc). Good example is RocketLauncher attached to Headman where in few animations he fires rockets and in others Rocketlauncher is in rest postition. Attachments can have their own animations easily controled in Serious Engine. RocketLauncher have so called "rest" animation played while Headman runs, walk, patrol or is idle and Fire and Reload animations while he fires weapons at player. When you attach model to another its animations are loaded with it so you can examine how would RocketLauncher "Fire" animation look in combination with HeadMan animation. All functions for adding/removing and examining attachments are found in Attachment tab ( Figure 29 ) in Tools Window menu.

1. Attachment Name
2. Attachment Model Browser
3. Attachment Animation Selection Pulldown
4. Translation Offset Fields
5. Rotation Offset Fields
6. Attachment Visibilty checkbox
7. Add/Remove Attachment Buttons
SeriousModelers ToolsInfo Attachment-Tab
Figure 29

Here you can add and remove attachments (7), name them(1), adjust position(4) and rotation(5), choose animation(3) and disable attachment's rendering(6). Headman have couple attachment models added and first one is Head.mdl named HEAD for easier manipulating, since head don't have any animations DEFAULT one is shown. Lower part of menu consist of Translation and Rotation offset fields where finetuning of attachment is performed.

Premise of attaching is that attached model uses 3 points from model its attached to as "anchor" points meaning that when ever those 3 points are moved or rotated attached model is also moved and rotated accordingly. Those 3 points' positions are represent by names center, front and up in attachment tab. Usually you add so called "attachment triangles" geometry on model you wish to attach additional models to (those triangles will have disabled rendering so they wont appear in game). To show how head is attached to Headman's left hand, disable visible checkbox for HEAD in Attachment tab and toggle wireframe mode (W shortcut), rotate model so you have best view on left hand, you should have something like on Figure 30.

SeriousModeler showing Headman with Attachment-Triangle and Numbers
Figure 30

Numbers on Figure 30 represent "Anchor" points (1 is center, 2 is front and 3 is up).Selecting points for anchoring will be explained in advance tutorial section.