from brian hayward (bthayward)
Detailed description:
Currently, when an armature deformed object's mesh is replaced by the ReplaceMesh actuator, the new mesh fails to deform to the armature's movement.
My patch fixes this by properly replacing the deform controller along with the mesh (when appropriete).
For instance, if one had an animated character using any of the standard deformation techniques (armature, ipo, RVK, or AVK), that character's mesh would currently be prevented from changing mid-game. It could be replaced, but the new mesh would lack the controller which tells it how to deform. If one wanted to dynamiclly add a hat on top of the character's head, it would require storing a secondary prebuilt character (mesh, armature, logic, ect...) on another layer FOR EACH HAT the character could possibly wear, then swapping out the whole character when the hat change was desired. So if you had 4 possible hat/character combos, you would have 4 character meshes, 4 armatures, 4 sets of logic, and so on. I find this lack of flexibility to be unresonable.
With my patch, one could accomplish the same thing mearly by making one version of the character in the main layer, and adding an invisible object atop the character's head (which is parented to the head bone). Then whenever it becomes desirable, one can replace the invisible object's mesh with the desirable hat's mesh, then make it visible. With my patch, the hat object would then continue to deform to the character's head regardless of which hat was currently being worn.
*note 1*
for armature/mesh deformations, the new mesh must have properly assigned vertex groups which match one or more of the bones of the target armature before the replaceMesh call is made. Otherwise the vertices won't react to the armature because they won't know how. (not sure if vertices can be scripted to change groups after the game has started)
*note 2*
The added processing time involved with replacing the object's deform controller is negligible.
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