Alright, as most of you know I am working on VESS's afv model, and well I'm at the part where I have to rig, and all that other non-sense. Long story short, what's gotten me confused is that when I take a look at the AFV, and Light Tank there is obviously attachments in the QC, but when it comes to sequences there is none, even though the model viewer says there is. Megel has helped me out by explaining how the vehicles work on Empires, but this sequence busniess has still gotten me confused. So can anyone here help?
Possibly the QC file is out of date? As I understand it all animations for the model are listed in the QC for the compiler, as vehicles are animated I would assume there should be animations included with the model for steering and driving etc, especially if they are listed in the sequences tab. The other option I suppose is that the code controls the bones directly and no animation work is done in the modelling package but I don't think that would be how it works. I assumed all games worked by having the animator animate the range of motion for things like aiming and steering, and then the code just moves to frames along that animation.
If the QCs are out of date, that makes a whole load of sense. Now the question is where is the updated ones?
An animation clip baked into the compiled model file. You make the animation in max or whatever, convert that file with the model + anim to an SMD, then run all the SMDs (reference model, collision model, any animations etc) through studiomdl with a QC file to tell the compiler how to compile it, then it outputs half a dozen other files and you dump them in the game folder along with textures and it loads it in game with animations as sequences.
