Creating a UT2003 Ragdoll: A Brief KAT Tutorial (Page 2)

Step 3: Explore the Editor

In case you skipped it, you really should read the Mouse Controls document now. Perhaps the most important idea to master in KAT is that of View Modes. If you move your cursor to the top of a viewport, the text in the corner will change from the view angle (top, left, perspective, etc) to the current view mode. If you right-click in this area, you will see the view mode menu. View Modes allow you to visualise an asset in many ways, so that you can always deal with a reasonable amount of data at once. View Modes define which asset components can be seen, how they are drawn, and what can be selected. They are bound to the number keys, and should be moved between freely as appropriate. All modes of KAT (file manager, asset editor, geometry editor) have an appropriate set of view modes. As you move between view modes in the Asset Editor, different elements of an asset are recognisable by colour. Select View->Colours (F9) to see the colour code. In the default view mode, the white shapes are the collision volumes, and the green cubes are dynamics parts that have no collision. Blue is used for joints and red for Centres of Mass (COMs). The skin is cyan in editing, and grey in simulation.

Step 4: Reposition the Ragdoll

UT2003 throws away position information when it instances a ragdoll, so you are free to move the asset as a whole within the KAT space. In order to properly simulate the ragdoll in KAT, we will rotate it so that it is standing, and move it slightly above the ground-plane. Part movement in KAT is hierarchical, so, for example, you can move an upper arm without having to also move the lower arm and hand. To see the part hierarchy, press the Hierarchy button in the Parts list (within the Asset Components rollup). If you select a part in this view, it selects the part in the viewports (and any other part dialogs you may have open). This lets you easily select the root bone to allow you to move the whole asset at once. Yes, you could do this by selecting all the parts, but this is a tutorial to show you lots of cool stuff :). Note that the hierarchy is purely for editing in KAT, and you are free to change it by dragging the parts around in the hierarchy view. For ragdolls, though, you probably don't want to do that.

Having selected the root bone (bip01), you can middle-drag in the viewports to move the ragdoll. Again, refer to the Mouse Controls and Keyboard Shortcuts documents installed with KAT. You might also like to play with the axis restriction tools on the toolbar. Other features that may be useful in correctly positioning the asset are the Selection Lock (found in the bottom-right, or bound to Space when the viewport has input focus) that prevents the selection from being changed by clicking in the viewports, and the 'Q' and 'Ctrl-Q' keys which rotate objects (again, only when the viewport has input focus). You may also want to work in single-viewport mode, which can be enetered by clicking 'Single/Split' on the toolbar or pressing F4 after making the appropriate viewport active (yellow border). You will also want to use Zoom Extents (toolbar, or press 'A' in a viewport), and Camera Targeting by double-clicking parts in the viewport. You should position the ragdoll so that it looks like the image on the right.

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