Thanks

I noticed that when exporting animations, all bone transforms are written for each frame involved in the timelapse, no matter if they actually differ from previous frames or are actually keyframed at least (as an acceptable minimum). Is there a way to optimize these out so unneeded frames aren't saved to SMD files? Or does Source require this anyway?

Finally this addon[docs.blender.org] (with pose mode features) along the usage of a helper bone exactly helped me to solve my problem

Hi,

I'm making a viewmodel with latest Blender (2.9) and Source Tools. I have imported the sample Source SDK v_hands model and also my weapon model separately, both including the ValveBiped bones. Since I used the "Append to target" mode, the RightHand bone is merged from both models, so the weapon itself automatically moves along the bone (good).

My problem is whenever I move or rotate the weapon itself, the transform is affected by the armature modifier in the weapon that got automatically created, so that the applied manipulation offsets are totally missmatched to the gimbals. This makes it hard to position the object how I want.

If I remove the armature modifier (keeping transform), then upon model export the weapon moves somewhat far from the right hand.

Is there a way to have the gimbals match the real directions it suggests during weapon transform under this scenario?

Thanks.