Sorry folks... I'm at it again.

This time I'm wanting to save a prop so that when it's loaded it automatically parents not to a figure, but to another prop. For instance... if I have three sword handles and three different blades, I want to be able to load any handle and then load any blade and have that blade "smart prop" to the handle.

I must be missing something, bit I can't find a way to do it. What am I missing?

TW

Can't do it - it needs to be a figure.

 Why did I think that before I asked? :)

Thanks Luke.

 The good part is, it's easy to make it into a figure. Take it into the setup room and out again without doing anything else, and .. you have a cr2 :)

Since it's a one-bodypart thing, you don't need to futz around with any joints or stuff.

Funny, I've smart propped a TV Ariel prop to the top of a TV prop and it snaps to it every time and follows the TV around like a smart prop, as far as I'm concerned it's a smart prop. No figures involved anywhere.

Put your handle on the sword in the pose room where you want it to sit.

Go to the hierarchy editor and drag the handle on top of the sword and let go, the handle becomes a child of the sword.

Select the handle only.

Click the add to library cross in the library pane.

When the dialogue box comes up type a name for the handle, dont do anything else!!!

Save it, you will get a box asking if you want to save it as a smart prop, say yes.

Should be it.

Quote - Funny, I've smart propped a TV Ariel prop to the top of a TV prop and it snaps to it every time and follows the TV around like a smart prop, as far as I'm concerned it's a smart prop. No figures involved anywhere.

Yeah you are right. I do it all the time - sorry I was thinking of materials. All you do is parent the prop and save it. When you save it you are asked if you want it to be a smart prop.

Remember that if you load the prop firs in the scene before the parent object it won't be parented. You have to load the parent object first.

A smart prop is smart-parented to something specific, let's call that thing that is the parent "SwordHilt_1". The "SwordBlade" can only smart prop to a thing who's internal name is that one thing, eg "SwordHilt_1". All the handles need to have the same internal name, eg:

prop <span style="color:rgb(0,255,0);">SwordHilt</span><span style="color:rgb(0,255,0);">_1 </span>
    {
    <span style="color:rgb(255,0,0);">name    Fancy Sword Hilt</span>

Fulfil that condition, and the smart propping works as normal. Parent a blade to "SwordHilt_1" (it does not matter which one, because they all use the same internal name), save the prop, when asked if you want to save it as a smart prop, answer Yes. It does not matter what the names of the blades are, and it does not matter what name you use in the 'name' line of each hilt, but the internal name of each hilt must be the same (eg "SwordHilt_1").

If the hilt files are saved with file compression turned off in the General Preferences, you can use a text editor to edit the internal names of the pp2 files to be the same