SBDroid Muzzle

[Snake]

I was just messing around with the SBDroid and noticed that the main weapon calls for sbdroid muzzle as the weapon geometry. Well I've looked at it in MSH viewer before (it doesn't show up) but I opened the msh and noticed it calls for dirt.tga. What in the world..? Well I created a dirt.tga and still nothing shows in the viewer. Has anyone looked at this in XSI or something? I guess it is some cut content. I wonder why it was referencing a .tga called "dirt"?

Weird stuff..

[RepComm]

According to XSI Visibility hierarchy, it renders ingame.

It's a triangle with a tiny little UV triangle for the material holding "dirt.tga" reference.
It is rotated to fit the SBD posture, and the parent (the top parent, or what they exported it under) is a primitive null called "cis_weap_inf_wristblaster"

Nulls don't render ingame, so you won't see that, just the hp_fire triangle.

I seriously doubt it's something that was scraped, it's just a weird mistake. (Also, they needed something to fire from, and it couldn't be the SBDroid because it isn't a vehicle, like the droideka)

[Sereja]

Seems, creators, just add the first tga, with alpha channel, they found, to make this gun, invisible. Usualy, they used com_inv_col.tga. The reason to create this gun - correct adjusting hp firepoint, to SB droid hand. Perhaps, with no geometry weapon, the muzzle effect cud be appear in wrong place.

The differense, with ivisible gun, and no geometry:

[tirpider]

The dirt.tga is located in the Shipped Common Effects folder.

It renders, but the muzzle also has the material ATRB set to 20 (hex 0x14) which is
Single Sided Transparency + Hard Edged Transparency (4 + 16)

dirt.tga does have an alpha channel and by the looks of the uv's in your screenshot, it's mapped so that it will be invisible.

The hp_fire null doesn't have any geometry clusters associated with it at all, so if you are seeing a triangle, then it is the cis_weap_inf_wristblaster node.

I agree that it's just a weird thing, but I don't think it's a mistake.

/begin speculation
The triangle may just have been a visual reference for the modeler to line up the fire point on the weapon.

Is it possible that the game has a requirement that the hp_fire not have geometry for it to work?

I haven't looked at other weapons to check, but other hard points do have some sort of hidden geometry with a material that has no tga assigned to it.  It seems like that would have been more efficient to use than using 2 nulls and a small piece of geometry with an over complex render flag.  There must be a reason for it.
/end speculation

It works, I wouldn't change it.
But it's weird, I wouldn't use it as an example.

[RepComm]

I don't think it possible to have no hierarchy to fire from. But from any type of hierarchy, maybe..

[Snake]

So it's basically just an hp_fire. Interesting..

[RepComm]

I don't think it possible to have no hierarchy to fire from. But from any type of hierarchy, maybe..

unless ofcourse your gun is set as emitterordinance for object class, like force push, and lightning.

[Sereja]

unless ofcourse your gun is set as emitterordinance for object class, like force push, and lightning.

Or, unless your gun is set as any other weapon class and ordance .
Seems, if the gun have no geometry, game just use units right hand firepoint as default.
And yes, nulls, can be used as firepoints. I have to replace hp fire geometry, to hp fire nulls, for my Snail Tank for example. Seems for vehicles, nulls works better.

[RepComm]

i've noticed that most stock models that have firepoints or hp points (Apparently you can name it whatever you want) are just geometry heirarchy, and I always use primitive nulls so I don't have to manually render them for ingame use(So they dont show up as big arrows or whatever ingame)