Garry's Mod

Garry's Mod

Ragdoll Mover
⑨lnsmall 2 Jul, 2022 @ 1:56am
Feature/tool suggestion: removing all physics from a ragdoll
(If this is something that's already possible with an existing tool, please let me know, since I haven't been able to find one.)

The intent of this is to try and work around the issue of non-physical bones that have physical bones as children, meaning that the non-physical bones can't move the physical ones. This continues to be an annoying problem for me, particularly with Pokémon models (seriously, pick like any Pokémon model from the workshop and it'll probably have this issue). I fully understand that this is a difficult problem, which is why my suggestion is a (hopefully) simpler way to work around it by adding the ability to remove physical bones from the equation entirely.

In the past this sort of workaround has worked for me - I would use the Animated Prop Tool to create a model without physics and default animation, and then use Advanced Bone Tool or similar to move the bones. Unfortunately this doesn't work properly with Ragdoll Mover, even if I turn off the entity filter, possibly because it might count as an NPC of some sort?

Honestly fixing the support with Animated Prop Tool / NPCs would suffice for my purposes, but I feel like it'd be better to have a dedicated feature (or even a separate tool, if it's outside the scope of this tool) that removes all physics from the selected ragdoll, or makes a new one with the physics removed, perhaps by creating an effect with the model attached. I'm aware this probably means I'd have to manually pick the bones from the list, but that's something I'm willing to deal with if it means I can get better poses out of it.

Would this be something that's feasible to do? I understand if it's not for one reason or another, but I wanted to hear your thoughts.
Last edited by ⑨lnsmall; 2 Jul, 2022 @ 1:59am
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Showing 1-4 of 4 comments
PenolAkushari  [developer] 2 Jul, 2022 @ 3:50am 
hm, interesting, i happened to do a check with tf2 scout, turned him into animatable prop through context menu, i think that's the feature of the addon, and was able to select bones and manipulate them quite fine through the bonelist stuff. when you were selecting your models, tool wasn't updating the bone list?

as some more ways to manipulate stuff, you can try applying ragdoll stretch to a ragdoll, won't really fix issue with moving nonphysics bones not moving physical ones, but you could make some more dynamic poses with it more easily without having to use ABT like functionalities.

there's also a tool that turns stuff into dynamic props, which are the ones without physics, although it seems to break some stuff like eye posing. as well as if you had any modifier applied to a ragdoll like color and stuff it'll reset it, as it technically removes previous ragdoll and spawns a new dynamic prop entity that has the same model, and ragdoll mover's gizmos seem to not like so many nonphysical bones on those entities that they get misaligned quite often, well, technically precise nonphysics bone manipulation tab was made just for that.

addons i mentioned:
ragdoll stretch
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=529986984

set lighting origin + turn into dynamic prop tool (they come in 1 pack)
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2591866528&searchtext=Set+light

technically if it would be needed i could make turn into dynamic prop tool thing to also turn stuff into effect props
⑨lnsmall 2 Jul, 2022 @ 9:33pm 
I don't seem to have anything in my context menu to turn something into an animated prop - it's a separate tool called "Animated Props", and you have to right click to pick a model and then left click to place it somewhere. The problem it has is that I can select it with Ragdoll Mover and pick bones from the list, but the gizmos don't actually appear. The precision sliders still work, but the reset button doesn't, so it basically acts like a worse version of ABT. This is the same behavior I seem to get from NPCs, and the animated props behave much the same as NPCs in other ways too (try moving/rotating them with the physgun) so I'm guessing that's the underlying issue.

I'm aware of the ragdoll stretch tool and I have found it useful, but I don't like using it for this particular purpose because it feels like it makes the posing process a lot more delicate and easy to kinda mess things up beyond repair. (Though maybe I should also try experimenting with using subtle body-breaking to make more interesting poses rather than insisting on doing that as little as possible... hmm.)

The dynamic props tool actually does seem to almost work, but it has a weird quirk for me where using it on a ragdoll and then trying to move it won't actually update its physical position? If I want to select it again with the physgun or a tool after moving it, I have to click wherever it was originally located. This doesn't seem to happen with regular props.
Last edited by ⑨lnsmall; 2 Jul, 2022 @ 9:46pm
PenolAkushari  [developer] 3 Jul, 2022 @ 12:54am 
yeah right dynamic prop tool had this thing with ragdolls. i've also happened to make a ragdoll unstretch tool that can set some of the bones back to where they are supposed to be, although it probably still might be messy. i'll look into adding prop effect conversion in dynamic prop tool, i think that should help
PenolAkushari  [developer] 3 Jul, 2022 @ 4:29am 
ah, found the addon that added make animatable c menu thing, this one. although i'm already in the process of adding prop_effect spawn stuff to turn into dynamic prop tool, so i guess i'll go through with it anyway https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=104604709&searchtext=easy+animation
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