So, in my effort to expand what my character can do, I’ve decided going back to platfomer roots and adding a hammer to smash things would be a good place to start. Just ask Mario. Or Jumpman, as he was introduced to us, lo those many years ago…

Luckily, kiddo had a hammer drawing and whipping up a model is old hat for me nowadays – can’t wait to see how my modelling skills will be challenged if I ever go back to actual 3D model making, instead of extruding everything in sights

The real difficulty came in trying to get my character to actually ‘hold’ the darn thing and have it face the right way. ‘Parenting’ one game object to another is a sore spot for me because I STILL  cannot get my player character to stick properly onto the boat he rides on when he goes from the castle level to the giant flower level.

So, like all puzzles, I try every combination until I get it to work. Then the problem becomes the hammer clipping through the player as he carries it…

The trick it seems is find a way to isolate part of the body to play one animation; while allowing other parts to play – such as walking. Unity provides a solution for this in the form of animator layer and avatar masks.

Except my character is animated with Anima2D – which doesn’t create an avatar…

I have exhausted many an hour trying to explain to Professor Google exactly what my problem is and how I am trying to solve this issue – only to have the Prof. spit back the exact SAME three tutorials YouTubed by a guy who must have a fiber deficit in his diet so he crams at least a pound and a half of cotton wadding in his face before hitting the record button…

I was about to drop a dime on the dev when I happened to see a slightly similar search result for ‘avatar creation’ and a link to the .pdf documentation to the asset. MOTHER OF DEV GODS – there is my answer. A masking for my Anima character – an answer! I finally found one after how many untold hours of pulling my lower lip down to my knees in frustration over this – and its in an actual document actually describing how to use my software. Imagine that.

Tune next week to see how I torture myself making things breakable.