About non phys bones having their own coordinate systems in LocRotScale

[penolakushari]

Happened to mess around with some things, noticed that changing BoneManipulatePosition also seems to affect GetBonePosition, so perhaps it would be possible to do some crutchy thing with taking current angle of a non phys bone, storing it somewhere, setting BoneManipulate position/angles to 0 0 0, then get each vector with bonemanipulate and read its world coordinates through GetBonePosition and assign actual handles like that, and then assign the stored data back, if I worded my idea in an understandable manner.

I'm rather inefficient when it comes to lua (or any scripting/programming stuff), so I'm sorry that I can't help more with that rather than giving some "idea" which may not even work. Although probably you might've already tried that.

[GitSparTV]

Hi, no I didn't try this, I will see what's up with it

[penolakushari]

Apologies if I may appear impatient, was mostly wondering if that thing was of any use?

[GitSparTV]

As a free project I spent time when I can and want to, so no

[penolakushari]

In the meantime happened to write up some"proof of concept" (probably not usable for actual use) code in godsent_locrotscale.lua, and i think it actually somewhat aligned axises for non phys bones with their physical counterparts.

Somewhere in the MoveTry function, from what I've seen it seems to visually align axises when grabbing them, although the usual preview still stays at 0 0 0 angle, same for actual movement. Also I've setup a not so great thing with counter, so I have to click left mouse 2 times on a ragdoll for it to move bone to local X+1 and Z+1 positions and read them, and hope that on 3rd click I manage to grab the invisible axis. I have it recorded here (Right heavy is one with physics bones, left is an animateable prop, so no physics bones) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJCHqsE23rI

I hope this would be of use, as in a way to give an idea on how to implement this stuff
(I also did try this thing with other bones on heavy, and tried it on spy, from what I've seen axises seem to be close enough to their physical counterparts)

local counter = 0 
local prev, prevB, crutch -- had to make some way to keep track of these things. i've probably violated some programming conventions this way.
-- nothing changed after this point until stated otherwise
do
	local function AxisDrag(center, planeNormal, rayOrigin, rayDirection, size, tolerance, ang, pr)
		local hitpos = util.IntersectRayWithPlane(rayOrigin, rayDirection, center, planeNormal)
		if not hitpos then return end
		local localized = WorldToLocal(hitpos, angle_zero, center, ang)
		local x, y, z = localized:Unpack()
		y, z = y * y, z * z
		if 0 < x and x * x <= size and y <= tolerance and z <= tolerance then return hitpos end
	end

	local function PlaneDrag(center, planeNormal, rayOrigin, rayDirection, size, tolerance)
		local hitpos = util.IntersectRayWithPlane(rayOrigin, rayDirection, center, planeNormal)
		if not hitpos then return end
		local dist = hitpos - center
		local mtol = -tolerance
		local x, y, z = dist:Unpack()
		x, y, z = x * x, y * y, z * z
		if x <= 1 and mtol <= y and y <= tolerance and mtol <= z and z <= tolerance then return hitpos end
	end

	function TOOL:MoveTry(t)
		local E = self.TargetEntity
		
-- changes happen after this point
		if E and E:IsValid() then
			local touchdir, touchpos, touchdirang, touchcolor
			local A, P
			if self.TargetBoneMode then -- check if bone is physics one
				A, P = self.BoneAng, self.BonePos
			else -- if it's not physics bone, do this monstrosity
				counter = counter + 1 -- i've made it use this counter thing because it needs time to move things with manipulateboneposition, otherwise bone won't be able to move and GetBonePosition won't get new data in 1 frame. probably this whole thing could be done in setup stage when you select a bone?
				
				if counter == 1 then -- first step - save current bone position and move it with ManipulateBonePosition
				
					prevB, prev = self.TargetEntity:GetManipulateBonePosition(self.TargetBone), self.TargetEntity:GetBonePosition(self.TargetBone)
					self.TargetEntity:ManipulateBonePosition(self.TargetBone, prevB + Vector(1, 0, 0))
					return
					
				elseif counter == 2 then -- for 2nd step record position of the bone with X + 1 offset and move bone to Z + 1 offset
				
					crutch = self.TargetEntity:GetBonePosition(self.TargetBone)
					self.TargetEntity:ManipulateBonePosition(self.TargetBone, prevB + Vector(0, 0, 1))
					return
					
				else -- and last step is recording position of Z offset, returning the bone back to its original position, after what some vector math (newXpos - oldpos):angleex(newZpos - oldpos)
					crutchZ = self.TargetEntity:GetBonePosition(self.TargetBone)
					self.TargetEntity:ManipulateBonePosition(self.TargetBone, prevB)
					A, P = (crutch - prev):AngleEx(crutchZ - prev), self.BonePos
					counter = 0

				end
			end
			local ux, uy, uz = A:Forward(), A:Right(), A:Up()

[penolakushari]

With some more "testing" it seems like this thing only works on models that were affected by "Make Animatable", whereas for usual props when selecting their non physical bones it still gets position as 0's.

[penolakushari]

Actually, no, sorry, think I've been too hasty. Apparently GetBonePosition also gives out world angles of a bone, and it seems to work with non physical bones from normal props, and in my case position that it gave out was the same no matter what bonemanipulation thing I did, hence why with all the subtraction things I did it gave me out 0's. Gonna look into that more and see what I could get, so far managed to get gizmos more or less match the bone angles, now gotta figure out how to make them change their position by axises properly.