Targetware: 3D Dev Guide

Pilots and Crewmen (Target Rabaul)

You do not need to model a pilot. We are developing a shared series of pilots and crew which you will be able to access via your .anm file. You do need to model walls and the floor of your cockpit, and a seat (just the back of it), unless the seat makes up part of the back wall of the cockpit. The pilot/crewman meshes come fully detailed from the waist up. For the legs, they have a flat sheet which is painted with an alpha layer, so that in-game, between and around the legs, the floor of your cockpit will show through. To take advantage of this, the floor of your cockpit needs to be slightly below the waistline of the crewman. You should also put in a simple 3D seat.

The shared pilot objects are set up to use a similar series of 2D pilot art. They can be configured in a variety of poses without having to generate a new 2D art sheet. If you would like a slightly different shape, you can copy one of the pilot figures, and edit him if you have Lightwave or something that will import/export .LWO files with their UV coordinates and material properties intact. Feel free to play with the geometry, but under no circumstances should you change the texture mapping in such a way that the 2D art would have to be re-done. The concept behind the shared pilots is to save texture space on your airplane's texture sheets, save 2D artist time, and save overall texture download size through the use of templates. When you are finished with your edits, place the new pilot figure into the /models/shared folder and send Yak a copy so he can include it in future distributions. Remember: we can create as many crewman meshes as we want as long as they share the same textures.

See the section on building the .anm file for information on how to include a shared pilot with your plane.