sensors on an animated character

[Pouk]

Hello. We need to attach sensors or colliders onto a specific parts of an animated character's body. Not for ragdoll physics, simply for collision detection with surrounding objects in mid-animation. We wonder what would the be best and the standard way of doing it. We've tried several ways. For example there's no problem to animate the collision box around movement of the character's body and after importing it into ShiVa having an animated sensor matching the character's animation. But then we've run into inconvenients with running both animation at the same time from different AnimBanks and with parenting one object to another. According to the Hunt sample files it seems the more correct way is to attach sensors in a code. Linking it to a specific bone joint is handy, but it doesn't seem to be as direct and user friendly as simply visually placing the sensors onto the model. So what is the standard and correct approach in this situation? Thanks in advance.

[redmotion]

I've not done this but I assumed that you parent the sensor to the bone you want it to relate to. You need the scene explorer and editor.

Drop a new sensor into the model. Pick the sensor, then the bone, right click and choose "group". Select "parent to last selected object" and then scale, transform and rotate the sensor into position.

[broozar]

indeed. have a look at "the Hunt: making of", the sensor section: http://www.stonetrip.com/developer/242-the-hunt-the-making-of#_Toc243907714 it covers exactly what you want to do.

[Pouk]

How do you select a bone in scene explorer? I don't seem to be able to do so.

[broozar]

you don't. also, there is no need to. you have to apply those sensors via script.

if you want to display the bones however and/or the bone tags, make sure to select the skeleton (name) tag in the scene viewer.