attach a camera to a bones

fono

I would like to have a first person view that change with the position of the head and the current animation been played. What is the correct hierarchy to follow? Let's say i have an npc that look around with the head (animation). How can make the camera rotation / position change with the animation itself? Thanks

TwistedTwigleg

You can use a BoneAttachment node on the head, and then place the Camera as a child node of the BoneAttachment. You could also use a BoneAttachment and a RemoteTransform node, if you do not want to keep the Camera node directly as a child of the bone. A third way would be interfacing with the Skeleton node directly in script and making the Camera follow the bone that way, though that may be a tad more difficult.

All three of the methods should allow for the camera position/rotation to change when the position and rotation of the animation changes. I would choose whichever works best for you and see if it accomplishes what you are looking for. :smile:

fono

Thanks a lot again TT. So for who is looking for the same thing, you should follow the following hierarchy if you want to achieve this result without code:

Briefly:

Skeleton: ----> BoneAttachemnt -------> Camera.

A lot of fun.

Megalomaniak

Changed topic to a question, @fono you should be able to assign a post as an answer.

slephy

@TwistedTwigleg I'm posting here because google search on BoneAttachment led me here. And on the topic of BoneAttachment: I'm reading the docs and I don't understand the value/purpose of using this type of node as opposed to, for instance, PhysicalBone. Both inherit Spatial which have transforms. Can you ....throw me a bone... on this one? (sorry, I just had to) Or in other words...can you help me understand the actual value of this node?

TwistedTwigleg

@slephy said: @TwistedTwigleg I'm posting here because google search on BoneAttachment led me here. And on the topic of BoneAttachment: I'm reading the docs and I don't understand the value/purpose of using this type of node as opposed to, for instance, PhysicalBone. Both inherit Spatial which have transforms. Can you ....throw me a bone... on this one? (sorry, I just had to) Or in other words...can you help me understand the actual value of this node?

Sure! The BoneAttachment node will have its transform updated any time the bone poses in the skeleton change, as the skeleton itself updates the transforms. This has its ups and downs, but the end result is that the BoneAttachment node is pretty much always placed correctly and the exact bone position. Additionally, the BoneAttachment node has been around for quite awhile, long before the introduction of the PhysicalBone. Not that it matters too much, but it’s worth noting.

The PhysicalBone is a bit more complicated and I should disclaim that I only have limited experience with it. The PhysicalBone node updates every time the physics update to place itself at the bone location. The PhysicalBone is also more memory heavy, even when not running physics, as it internally makes a RigidBody node per-bone.

Functionally, there is not a ton different though! In the future the BoneAttachment node may allow for setting the bone transform directly, which would make it useful for easily changing bone transforms in real time without needing to handle the transform conversions. Currently though, the biggest difference is the BoneAttachment node is a more lightweight solution to getting the bone position than the PhysicalBone.

Hopefully this helps clarify the difference a bit! :)

slephy

@TwistedTwigleg yeah, that's great, thank you so much!

Another thing that I'm banging my head against the wall over is...why do imported armatures NOT actually create a "bone" (and instead reference the meshes as children of the skeleton) and that I can't really manipulate a bone like I can manipulate any other object in the editor (using the gizmo) it's making for a very troublesome way of handling the bones (compared to the way Blender does it. I feel like Godot's skeleton/armature system has 90% of the functionality of Blender's but it's missing bone gizmo transforms and to boot my final child bones aren't visible).

Is there some way you approach this problem? How do you go about thinking/handling all this? Am I missing something?

TwistedTwigleg

@slephy said: @TwistedTwigleg yeah, that's great, thank you so much!

No problem, I'm happy it helped :smile:

Another thing that I'm banging my head against the wall over is...why do imported armatures NOT actually create a "bone" (and instead reference the meshes as children of the skeleton) and that I can't really manipulate a bone like I can manipulate any other object in the editor (using the gizmo) it's making for a very troublesome way of handling the bones (compared to the way Blender does it. I feel like Godot's skeleton/armature system has 90% of the functionality of Blender's but it's missing bone gizmo transforms and to boot my final child bones aren't visible).

Is there some way you approach this problem? How do you go about thinking/handling all this? Am I missing something?

In Godot 4.0 there will be a gizmo for modifying bones if this PR gets merged. Its not quite like Blender though, it seems the bones will have single points at the origin of each bone, and then you can click them to get a transform similar to the one for Spatial-based nodes. I haven't used the gizmo myself, but it looks usable. The screenshots make it look a little cluttered though, but I'm not sure there is a great way around that with using points for the bone gizmo.

What I use is my IK plugin and "Bone3D" like nodes to move bones around. Its a bit more tedious to setup, though I have a editor plugin that will setup all the Twisted_Bone3D nodes in a Skeleton, but once setup its really easy to use. I've used it for making simple animations in this game, where the character is animated entirely in the Godot editor using the "Bone3D" like nodes.

slephy

Thanks so much for the heads up @TwistedTwigleg and the note on your plugin! :)