Aiming with multiple weapons

msleva

Hi I'm quite new to Spine and I am trying to set up a character with the ability to aim multiple guns. I've been following the Spineboy example and the issue I'm currently coming across is that I can only get the arms to follow the aim ik if they are totally straight (ie: 0 rotation). Obviously, for things to look natural I need both the arm that's holding the gun to bend as well as the supporting hand and I'll need multiple guns (ie: aiming a pistol with both hands, aiming a machine gun etc.). It would also be nice to be able to switch which hand is holding the gun (ie: pulling the bolt back on a sniper rife with the gun hand while still holding it in the off hand). I haven't found any tutorials on how to set this up so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Erika

If you want a working example, Gunman may be what you are looking for: Spine: Asset Packs
Otherwise, if you have a certain setup you are struggling with, if you post screenshots and enough information perhaps I can help figure it out.

msleva

Thanks, this seems to have everything I need so I'll check it out!

Is there any kind of tutorial or documentation for using/setting up this Gunman project. I purchased it but when I open it in Spine there are a lot of weird aspects to it and I don't know how to begin animating something like this.

Mitch

Hello! I'm the maintainer/creator of those Hitman/Gunman projects!

A while back I created a "How to add a Crouch state to Hitman" tutorial.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kTJckGc7sQ

I will work on a quick overview of the workflow that was used to create the Gunman animations! I can definitely see how they would be a bit difficult to get started with.

msleva

Thanks for this! I'll check it out, it's a really cool rig I just can't figure out all the controls like how to properly animate reloading for instance.

Mitch

Indeed! I will get to this video later today for sure, but in the mean time I'll let you know that it involved copying the keys from the setup pose for a weapon, animating, and deleting before export.

Here ya go!

Nate

Thanks for the video, Mitch! :beer: We've linked to it from the gunman details on the asset packs page.

msleva

Thanks Mitch, I've been using the rig and it's great! I have one other question and it's regarding the AimPivot. Essentially I would like it to function like the Spineboy rig, where the AimPivot follows a crosshair and everything IKs properly but thus far if I IK it to a crosshair bone, only the gun will IK properly. I think I need to set transform constraints but I'm not sure which bones need to be constrained in order to get aiming to look right. Any help would be great!

Hey I just wanted to update that I found a solution to my problem. I created a "Crosshair" bone that the recoil bone is IK constrained to and it wasn't working because the constraint order is super important (I didn't know this). The crosshair constraint needs to be at the top of the hierarchy. I also added a transform constraint to the AimPivot that allows it to adjust relative to the crosshair so it isn't in a fixed position.

Mitch

Tada! 🙂 Good work finding a solution!

This rig was made prior to that type of constraint existing, so I might actually add a similar Crosshair-pointer variant of Gunman to that pack soon too!

Glad the rig is working out for you! It took a lot of trial and error and thinking to find that sweet spot for me of "How to deal with a character like this efficiently" and that pretty much turned into the birth of the asset pack itself!

Definitely share some of your work when/if you can! Always happy to see what comes from it all.