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I'm curious... what does one typically do with weapons that are:

1. Two handed. OR
2. Shift positions from left to right grips.

We're talking instances of long-axes, spears, staffs. With 2D references in their place... would you recommend assigning an independent bone to the weapon and reconciling it's position with that of the hands (especially if it's a staff)? That's not very intuitive, but with the tools I'm working with I really don't currently have any more theories at hand. Do you think the independent bone idea would go somewhere besides south?

Okay, okay... asides from motion capture!

Well if you're looking to animate someone with those movements, you will want to look in the right place of course. You will not likely find someone wielding an axe or spear properly, but martial arts, such as my own still love to play with staffs, I have used the bo like a spear/naginata before, you will want to try and learn the mechanics of the movements first, I mean with your own body, it usually helps when looking at your rigged 3D model once you've done the movement yourself, I mean a curtain pole is good enough.

Also you will want to consider the weight of the object, a two handed axe will be quite heavy, so the character will have bent knees and will move quite slowly, I modelled an Orc with a 2-handed axe in a standing stance, it looks like he is sitting on the toilet, but there may be reference there.



If you want to find video footage, try searching things such as 'bo' or 'jo', I'm sure You tube may have videos, they're usually good for finding videos on martial arts. As you're not going to use motion capture, these sort of resources should be helpful in know what your model should look like when animating it, as you would with a walk cycle, look at the angle each part the demonstrator is at.

Here are some resources I have found for you, I hope they're useful.

http://www.houstonbudo.com/KOBUDO.HTM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnjUuFaj9DQ
And this one looks a bit crazy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snFilmk3lKk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvgewhVin34

And the youtube search I did:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Bo+kata&search=Search

Thanks... I'll have to look at those videos when I'm on a different provider. This university has a really strange knack of not being able to get abourd youtube. Otherwise, I found alot of staff footage on Google.

In the martial arts that I studied, I did some rudimentary staff training -- mostly self-taught, but some basics nonetheless. I understand the importance of reference pics when modelling and animating. I was thinking of grabbing my sister's digi-cam and capturing some footage of the attacks I wanted to animate.

Grabbing reference pics really won't be the difficulty in the long haul. The real problem I'm going to be up against is the animation process itself. I can't for the life of my come up with a logical process.

One idea I had was a function that centered the staff inbetween the hands when in use and angles it appropriately. However, this subfunction would negate the need for one-handed attacks, spins and switches in between hands. I'm trying to jot down more pseudo-code to see if there is some more logic the code could go by. This would make the animating a tad easier -- especially with GOOD reference stages. But coding is not my specialty -- yet.

If i model a sword,i use my own swords as a picture or a basic sketch,then model it...then trying to animate it.

But you realy should get the hang of using them before animating them for a good game.

I'm no expert with the staff, but I'm not expecting to produce a blockbuster action platformer. I have to be the renassaince man and do the best I can... and I'm NOT making another soul-caliber either.

Otherwise, I know some folks who are possibly better than I at the staff.