Help regarding hand models/hand objects

[CielsTenebreuse]

Tutorials/help on customized stuff is hard enough to find as it is, but regarding changing the lantern/light source and the hand position used I have come up completely empty. I did see the page on how to change the default lantern's color but nothing more than that. Basically, I am using the same hand model and one of the objects from the game as the light source for a story I want to make, so I don't need to create new models or anything. The animation is also simple, you raise it up in the palm of your hand and back down when you want it "turned off." So, let's say the "lantern" in question is a box (it's not a box, but for now we'll say it is), here is my terribly drawn but accurate enough MS Paint demonstration of what I am basically looking to make:



Problem is, I have no idea how hand models actually work. I have not found any information as to what the various file names do, how the hand model and hand object connect, being in two separate folders, how the animations work, and I've also tried looking at, say, the files for the flashlight model and the way the files are laid out seem to differ from that of the default one in the game, making this more confusing - unless those are files to replace certain ones in the default one's folder, I may have to look back then that would make more sense. But then there are still issues like how the lantern is actually two separate parts, the handle, and the lantern itself, whereas some others I see, like the flashlight or the candle used in the one custom story (I forget its name, EDIT: I know now, it was When Life No Longer Exists) are one-piece items, like how I want mine to be.

So, are there any tutorials out there to show how this works, or maybe some advice as to what to do (I already have the lighting for my "lantern" set up and everything, but have no way to find out how, or even if it works or not).

Btw I am trying to stick with Blender for this, so no advice if it's for popular yet too-pricey-for-me programs like Maya or anything, please.

[Juras]

Alright, firstly, if you want to have a custom "lantern" or arms you will need to make a full conversion.

The way the hand and the lantern in Amnesia works is basically the lantern is attached to one of the arm's bone joints, the "attachpoint" joint which is located in the palm of the hand. The amnesia lantern has a handle as a submesh which makes it possible for the lantern to swing when player is moving around, but it's not necessary. If you go to the lantern folder you will see that there's a file called "lantern.ho" which you can open with notepad++ or a similiar program. That file is basically the "settings" of how the lantern is attached. The position, rotation, scale and some other options that you can tweak. Unfortunetely, if you want your arm position to be like you showed you're going to need to make custom animations for the arm in maya(you can get the student version for free so no need to buy it). There simply is no other way cause you can't rotate the arm using HPL2 tools. Here's a custom flashlight and an arm that I made for a guy who's making a mod for Amnesia: http://www.moddb.com/mods/bleed-with-me/...m#imagebox . I made a new arm model (you can use Amnesia one and just make new animations for it instead), used the same bones as amnesia one had and then animated so that the fingers and the arm would look like that. Then I made a flashlight (no submeshes, just one mesh) and the guy attached it using the .ho file. Anyway, this is all I know about making custom arm/lantern. It's possible and actually not that hard if you know how to animate. The hardest part is making the .ho file settings perfect to make a new flashlight's/lantern's position/size perfect. Atleast that's what the guy that used the new stuff that I made told me.

Hope I helped in some way and that you learned something aswell, and if you have any more questions, feel free to ask

[CielsTenebreuse]

Alright so the past several days I've successfully got my new lantern in the game, which I was very glad to see, as silly as it looked with the default hand (it vaguely looks like he's holding it like a bowling ball, ha). And with Blender, I exported some simple animations I made with the hand and renamed them to the .dae_anim files as is shown in the animations folder. Now here's another problem I've run into dead ends trying to find answers: the .anm files.

First I made copies of the .dae_anim files and renamed those as .anm files, put them in the folder with the .dae_anim files, tried to load the test map only for it to crash. So obviously that wasn't correct, so I brought the default .anm files back into the folder, loaded my test map and it uses the same default hand animation as before. So then I try loading it without the .anm files altogether and, again, crash. So how am I supposed to go about making one of these mysterious ".anm" files to match up with the .dae_anim files I have anyway? I've REALLY come up short trying to look this one up.

[7heDubz]

Blender animations are not compatible with amnesia.

If you can try with Maya it should work.

(( unless this changed someone correct me if so)

[CielsTenebreuse]

(( unless this changed someone correct me if so)

http://wiki.frictionalgames.com/hpl2/thi...3d/blender

There.

So... anyone?

Actually, just glancing through that page it looks like there are quite some complications with the program when it comes to making it work with Amnesia. So I'm not even sure if I did the .dae_anim parts correctly...

[Mudbill]

You can use Blender for making models, but as far as I've seen, everyone seem to say it will not work with anything but Maya animations.