HL2/Source - Procedural Bones visualisation.

A visualisation of how the standard male biped procedural bones work in Valve's Source engine.

The model shows a full envelope of motion followed by close ups of the shoulders and finally the chest area. The default biped bones are grey, the procedural ones multicoloured to help highlight their movement.

These bones, found between bones of the standard Valve biped, are animated procedurally in real-time by the engine. They react and orientate themselves based on the relationship of the a parent bone and it's child. They are particularly useful for smoothing out distortions where bones will twist and rotate at extreme angles relative to one another.

And example would be the wrist bone. This angles itself based on the angle of the hand and forearm bone and can be used to reduce the twisting up of the wrist of a model during extreme angles of rotation.

The model uses the "male.vrd" file shipped as part of the Source SDK. This file creates enables procedural bones from the chest up and the arms. To use it simply use "$proceduralbones "male.vrd"" in your QC file and weight vertices to the procedural bones.

As procedural bones are calculated in real-time by the engine they are costly and should be used sparingly.

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• Source (game Engine)
• Half-Life 2
• Counter-Strike: Source
• Day of Defeat
• 3D
• CGI
• Animation