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My project requires a bit of custom hand gestures and all now I know how to model and animate my hands so the question is not about the modeling skills. What I am wondering is the process of implementing the .X file as the hand model. I searched for some tutorials, however have not found any neither on the web, not in the PDF tutorials in FPSC Docs Folder. I would like to request some help as I want my first project to be a decent quality one.

First thing that I found weird is the lack of an FPE file in the folder. To find out more about the cinematic hands, I figured that all cinematic hands are essentially custom animated gun hands without gun models rigged to them.

So I followed:
D:\Program Files (x86)\The Game Creators\FPS Creator\Files\gamecore\guns\ww2\colt45

Decided to go with the basic Colt hand model.
So What I found is an HUD.X file, which upon import to MAX revealed 2 models. A hand with a gun model and an empty hand model.

First Question. In order to make sure that the animation is properly seen within the FPSC Game, You would need to set up a 3D Max Scene camera in the same manner as the FPSC. This will allow to preview the animations in Max as they would be viewed in FPSC. What Are the properties that you would typically use? Also what is the orientation of the hands? PS: This is not exactly required but it helps. If anyone has thought and perfected this method, an advice would be nice. If now, then I'll work around a trial and error.

Second Question Instead of a typical .fpe file, I have found the gunspec.txt file which contains things like animations lists, muzzle flash specs and so on. BUT It does NOT reference the .X model anywhere in it. Obviously you don'y just simply load a .x file into PFSC. Using the GETCINEMATICHANDS fiction though a .fpi file, what is it that you are referencing to to load the animation?

Third Question The post about cinematic hand fuctions explains here - A placeholder entity must exist within the level for this command to work. The place holder entity must be dynamic and must not spawn at the start of the level. What is this placeholder he is talking about? Is it an entity of the .x file with hand animations?