Red Mage Focus

[Iscah]

Not the scaling of the rapier, but the relative position of the rapier and focus in animations of characters whose arms, torsos, and hips are not the same proportions. Differences in relative ranges of motion due to character size differences can't easily be handled with a single rapier+focus model.

But still, for each single character, their rapier and focus is (apparently) a single weapon model and not two independent mix-and-matchable ones.

[Rongway]

But still, for each single character, their rapier and focus is (apparently) a single weapon model and not two independent mix-and-matchable ones.

I don't know what else to say except, "That's just not how things are done."

The amount of freedom the focus has to move independently of the rapier in animations (see especially Contre Sixte and Manafication) would not be served by making the rapier and focus a single model because you would have to perform multiple transformations within the single weapon model itself, making sure the weapon transformations fit each individual character, as you animate the character action. Far simpler would be to make them two separate models so that you don't have to do any maths on the weapon models and you can just let the character animation handle all the movements.

Making a weapon a single animated model is really only something you do when you want the weapon not to care about the rest of the universe. It's animated only to care about itself and how the weapon's pieces move within that weapon's personal space. You don't animate a weapon and have it also care about how it needs to move about a character's personal space; that's what character animations are for.

[ThorneDynasty]

I'm not seeing the connection there. If "rapier and focus are a single model" for a single character to equip, that is unrelated to different characters needing different sizes of the rapier-and-focus model.

I don't know the technicalities myself, but with how rigid item categories are in this game, I would be surprised if a primary arm is able to be placed in the secondary arm slot at all. Otherwise it should have been an obvious thing for ninja, at least.

Technically they could be the same model if you went to incredible lengths to 3D model in the most unnecessarily cumbersome way just to make a ton of extra work for yourself. Like why on earth would you force yourself to remodel everything for all the different character models when you can just have 2 separate objects and scale them?

You are thinking in terms of "it's a single item in the game logic, so obviously it must be a single 3D rendered object", but those are not intrinsically linked like that and it's just not a sensible way to do things behind the scene.

[Iscah]

You are thinking in terms of "it's a single item in the game logic, so obviously it must be a single 3D rendered object", but those are not intrinsically linked like that and it's just not a sensible way to do things behind the scene.

I'm just going on what the other guy said. (See post #4 -> #5 -> #9.)

But yes, "single item in the game logic" sounds more likely and what the first post may have been meaning anyway.

I stand by my main point that you probably can't put a main hand weapon in the off-hand slot, or they probably could have done it at least for ninja where the two pieces have the same model.