Climbing Regions/Ladders: Help for newbies

[boblishman]

Hi Guys,
Although I have been 3D modelling for a few years I am a complete newbie to Age creation (just 2 weeks) and have been using the excellent Alcugs tuturials http://alcugs.almlys.org/wiki/index.php/AgeCreationTutorialsList. All was going (reasonably) well until I decided to add a floor to my new 'EggDome' hut... and a ladder up to it...

I was using the Climbing tutorial (http://alcugs.almlys.org/wiki/index.php/AgeLadders) and decided to use the first "easy" method for my ladder and so used the Scripts->Add->PyPRP->Add generic region , Now change the prpregion property to "climbable" method (as it seemed the quickest way to make a working ladder).

I added the ladder and the region as explained... but, when I went to test my ladder things were not as I expected... . Whilst I was able to climb the ladder, when I got to the top and dismounted it... I "shot forwards" about 4 feet... then fell into my first-floor mesh (up to my knees by the thickness of the floor!

Anyway, after 3 sleepless days I have found out several things (that I cannot see explained anywhere on the Alcugs site -although please correct me if I'm wrong) that need to be done before the ladder/climbing region works correctly.

I now have a fully working perfectly animated ladder ... ... but I really wouldn't want any other newbies going through the hell I've been through to acheive this, so I thought I'd post here to help anyone who is having problems.

The Alcugs tutorial (IMHO) seems to imply that the Climbing Region has to align to the floor surfaces, and not that the floor surfaces have to align to the Climbing Region.

Once I realised this (DOH!) ... then I was on the right track...

Here is my advice for any newbie trying to create a working ladder (which is additional to the Alcugs tutorial, not instead of):



The first thing to do is to make sure that both of the floors (that the ladder leads from and to) have the following logical properties:



This will stop the "shooting forwards" problem (which was actually my biggest headache in this whole thing).



My ladder has 12 rungs (including the bottom one near the floor that the Avatar puts his LEFT foot on (0.42 units higher than the floor surface)...





1) Find the z height of the ground floor mesh (press the N key to see the Transform Properties window) by selecting the vertices of the floor surface near to the ladder in Edit Mode. The Transform Properties window will show their value (in my case 2.032) ...






2) Now, you need to set the bottom of the climbing region box to the exact same value as the z height in the ground floor mesh by (in Edit Mode) selecting the vertices and clicking inside the Median Z value box and typing it in manually ...



... this ensures that the ground floor and the bottom of the climbing box regions are at exactly the same level.


3) Now we need to set the HEIGHT of the climbing region.

In my case there are 12 rungs on the ladder... so the climbing region's top vetices z values need
to be set to:

the bottom floor's z height (which is now also the climbing region's bottom value as well) + 12 (the number of rungs)

... (in my case 14.032) ...




4) Finally, we have to ensure that the first floors's top Z vertices are the same as this vlaue too ...





and thats it. (phew)

I know that for the experienced Age builders this may seem very obvoius... but, believe me, if you dont have all those surfaces lined up exactly ... you will get some very strange results. I know it does say this (kind of) on the Alcugs tutorial but (IMHO) it's not really stressed how important it is that the climbing region's height must be a WHOLE number ( e.g 12.000 ) and not something like 18.023)... and that you match the top floor to the climbing region, and NOT the climbing region to the top floor...

Like I said, I now have a ladder that works perfectly (in both directions) ... and that the animations match up to the ladder exactly.
It has caused me a few sleepless nights, but, once it's working... it's all worth it ...


I hope this may be of some help to anyone having problems ... oh, and here he is my Avatar in action inside my new hut.




(oh, and yes, please excuse the terrible texturing...it's not high on my priority list at the moment... I'm more interested in getting things to "work" at this stage...

cheers,

Bob

[Dovahn]

Looks really good. Personally, since I'm also new to the age-creation process of Blender, I know that stuff explained by the members of the community at large will be very helpful, so thanks for putting this together. The screenshots also look pretty cool.

Dovahn

[BAD]

Thanks! This is the kind of stuff that we need on this forum as much as anything else.

[andylegate]

Bump> Hey guys, this would be a good one to move the the Tips forum, it just saved me some BIG headaches, but it took a little bit to find.

Except one headache.....the Y Axis. the tutorials say that the Avie will climb the largest Y Axis, and true to form, after I tired it out, my Avie won't climb the ladder unless I approach it from the side. Does this mean that all ladders or climb areas have to face the Y axis?? That's not too cool if it's true.

[Chacal]

Maybe Bob should edit the Wiki with this info.

[Nadnerb]

Bump> Hey guys, this would be a good one to move the the Tips forum, it just saved me some BIG headaches, but it took a little bit to find.

Except one headache.....the Y Axis. the tutorials say that the Avie will climb the largest Y Axis, and true to form, after I tired it out, my Avie won't climb the ladder unless I approach it from the side. Does this mean that all ladders or climb areas have to face the Y axis?? That's not too cool if it's true.

That would be referring to the local Y axis of the object, not the global Y axis of the world. If you find the little drop down menu that says "Global" (to the right of the "Edit/Object/UV/ect Mode" drop-up) in it, and change it to "Local" you'll see the direction that the object's own Y axis is facing in. (the widget will change orientation, but only if it has been rotated previously) That's the direction that you climb from, and it can be changed by rotating the object.

[andylegate]

Thanks Nadmerb. I had just found what you said above in the Blender Tutorial. Took a while to find it too.

[Justintime9]

well, the Tutorial say to make each rung a cirtain distance apart... How do we know how to do it? i mean... it just say "put them 1.42 blender units from each other" and I'm like... what? how do i do that? how do I know what blender units are, and how I make all the rungs in the right place? /me pulls his hair out

[Nadnerb]

If you do a grab or extrude, and constrain it along an axis, just start typing numbers, and it'll go that distance.

For instance, to make a box exactly 4.72 blender units tall, start with a flat square, press e to extrude it, move the mouse to make sure that worked, then type in 4.72, and the extrusion will snap to 4.72 units along the pink line. Then you can click the mouse or press enter to complete the operation, or backspace to enter a different number.

Typing numbers works for all editing operations. Ones that are not constrained to one dimension can be controlled by pressing tab to select which axis to enter for. (the numbers you're typing appear at the bottom left of the 3D view you're working in.)

[Justintime9]

aha! Thx! Why didn't they put that in the tutorial? I don't think it says that anywhere on the Alucugs Tutuorials How in Kerath's name did they expect us to figure that out?