I'm making a very large grandfather clock, and i'm wondering if the way to move the joint where the hands meet is as simple as just moving the joint in milkshape, and exporting it with the modified skeleton. Is this the proper way to do this? Or are there additional steps required to make this work? Thanks!

Edit: ok, that was a stupid question. It doesn't export with the joints. At least not as an object file. Should I export it using something else?

Edit: (again) I exported it as a .5gd file, but the skeleton only appears as tiny blue points. Is this still a safe way to change the joint location? Or will that not work?

I believe this has to be changed in the CRES. Even if you export a jointed mesh using Unimesh, the joints are stored elsewhere. Others may have better guidance for you (I've only done it once and it was a couple years ago) or it may at least give you a better search term.

Hmmm, ok, at least that's a lead to go on. I know moving the joints in a car works, i've just never done it with a stationary object...

ok, i see it, now i just have to figure out how the heck to change it...anyone have a good suggestion?

First, you have to find the right joint to move; you can do it relying on their name (quite unsafe, but in this case "minute_rot" and "hourhand_rot" are quite self-explanatory ); or clicking on the various joints in the GMDC preview, looking at what mesh parts are assigned to them.

Once you know the name of the joints, go to your 3D editor and load both the original mesh and the modified mesh, for a comparison. You have to calculate the distance (in all the three axis) between the original position and the new position; you have to do it just looking at the mesh (e.g. measure the distance between the rotating point of the original and modified hour hands).

Once you know the distance, go to the CRES, select the joint and modify the values in the "Translation" box. Remember that Milkshape and SimPE use different axis systems: in SimPE, +X means moving to the right; +Y means moving toward you; +Z means moving upwards.

Note: You can skip the part involving the 3D editor, but then you must proceed by trials and errors, and it may be quite a long process, considering that whenever you apply a modification in the CRES you must start the game and sell & re-buy the object.

Sheesh. Could they make it any more complicated? Thanks, I'll give it a shot.