Attaching a weapon to the player and animating

Hi,

Im having hardtime understanding the concept of FPS games at how do they make characters with 200+ different weapons.

I bought this http://3drt.com/3dm/modern-firearms/modern-firearms-animated-shots.htm.
I thought it i would learn how it is done, however, it wasn't made separatly, the hands and weapons are always together.

What i thought is i need to make the hands and the weapons separately and position the weapon on the hands with the game engine, using helper bones.
Am i thinking wrong?

How should i tell an artist to make it the way it needs to be?

Thanks for any help.

 

Anybody?

 

On hands have a helper "weapon" that will hold the weapon.
Then in modeling app position the gun in arms, animate it and everything.
After that export hands with the helper(if not already) and after that export weapon with the same helper.
Then in unity when you import arms and weapon just snap these two helpers to the same position.

 

When you say "helper", what are you referring to?

 

Oh and, if i do it this way, how can i separate the animation for the hands and for the weapon?
I don't think unity will know that the weapon used in the animation is the one that im going to snap on the hands.

 

From what I understand, basically you set up your character with its animation as usual. In Unity, or your modelling application, you have an 'empty' attached as a child of your character's hand. You might name it "weapon".
Then, in Unity, you just make your weapon a child of the "weapon" empty. As the player animates, the weapon automatically follows the empty's position and rotation and such. If you player's hand turns, so does the empty and the weapon.
Now, if you want the weapon to animate, that would just be an animation on the weapon, not the player.

That way, it doesn't matter what you put into your player's hands. It follows the player's hand movements and such. The weapon is just a child object, stuck to your hand. The player animation controls the player's body...hands, feet, etc, and doesn't -need- to know or care about what is attached to the hands.
Hopefully this makes sense, and is correct and useful

 

It helps me alot until that concern.
How do i make the weapon a child of the hands if the player have the ability to change to another weapon, then what?

 

Hide/unhide weapon. Child/Unchild.

 

So far its clear, but i still dont know what type is the "helper".

 

Usually it's a bone.

 

- jc_lvngstn
"As the player animates, the weapon automatically follows the empty's position and rotation and such. If you player's hand turns, so does the empty and the weapon."

Why even use an extra helper? why not just parent the hand to the gun? instead of Gun>helper>hand why not just have it Gun>hand?

when animating i just parent the weapon to the hand controls anyways. would this be a problem or do you guys think it will be fine with out using the extra helpers there?

 

by "child" do you mean another bone/joint? or do you just have the dummy cube parented to the hand joint??

 

What if you have animationes with weapon?How to handle this situation?

 

I bought models from this creator https://assetstore.unity.com/packag...ds/fantasy/crusader-remastered-129603#reviews and if try to put weapons in bone hand don't move them, i understand he has to create a specific bone in model for placing the weapon and if he didn't do it there is no way to use a weapon in the character?