Hi all,
I'm new to jme (and to 3d game stuff) and currenly reading tutorials and playing around with the examples.
I managed to load a test model I created in blender using the MD5Importer. The model has 2 tentacles and each tentacle has its own set of animations. Now I can tell the MD5Importer to load the exported model and animations, and I also can start an animation, but only one animation will play at a time (i.e. only one tentacle will be animated) - no matter what I try.
So here my question… how (if possible) could I do sth like:
play "animLeft" (an animation that only uses the joints of the left tentacle)
and
play "animRight" (only right tentacle joints)
simultaneously?
Maybe I have to use another format for this?
Any help is greatly apprechiated!
it depends on the exporter you used. i dont know the specifics, but if the animated mesh is exported in one piece, it will not be possible.
if the exporter exports in multiple meshes (you are importing a Node with two TriMesh objects attached) then you should also have two AnimationControllers, and these can be "started" simultaneously.
play around with it, and also the SceneMonitor can help you with that. Search for it in the forums.
Things like that strongly depend on the importer and animation system used… AFAIK none of the importers support this yet. You can make it a feature request though! 
Would this be needed (give jME the functionality) to have more 'free' animations (ie Torso-Lean left & Legs-walk forward)??
This kind of system allows you to combine animations… Certain bones follow animation A and other bones follow animation B.
E.g this allows you to combine "run" & "shoot" animations to get a "shoot while running" kind of animation.
i modified the jointcontroller to support this. search the forums, it's somewhere. the model needs to be in ms3d-format
wow, thanx everyone for the replies
btw, I think I really start liking this engine ;D keep up the good work ! 