Manipulating 3D dialogs

[Spooner]

What I'm trying achieve actually uses dialogs defined in desciption.ext, but since I imagine that 99% of people with experience of creating 3D dialogs made them for vehicle instrument panels within addons, I thought it would be best to ask here.

I want to be able to manipulate some 3D objects within dialogs, but I can't find any information on how to do this. An example of the effect I'm trying to achieve is the compass and clock you see within ArmA's standard map dialog. Specifically, what I'm attempting to do is copy these standard clock and compass objects into my own dialog:

- I've copied the config from the BIS config files (dta\bin\config.bin) and this has allowed me to display the objects in my dialog at any position or rotation and to allow them to be dragged with the mouse. I'd like to be able to:
    - Animate the objects (position and rotation) from scripts.
    - Force them into the foreground/background positions in-game (I can set which state to start in within the config though).
    - Illuminate the objects (they appear dark compared to the standard versions on the standard map).
    - Animate the selections based on the sources defined within them (such as "clockHour" or "compassPointer").
        - Do I need to define my own sources? Can I define my own sources?
        - I've tried definining my own sources as global variables and functions within scripts, but neither seems to help.

- I don't need to create the p3d files, since I'm just reusing existing models that I know work for BIS.

I'm not expecting anyone to answer all of these questions, but I am hopeful that some examples or tutorials are available somewhere. The only reference I could find on 3D dialogs was in the Vehicle HUD, but that seems to be a quite different way to manage them than within general dialogs.

[SyB]

        - Do I need to define my own sources? Can I define my own sources?
        - I've tried definining my own sources as global variables and functions within scripts, but neither seems to help.

you can only use the sources for anims currently defined in the compass or watch.
if you wanted to create new anims (with obviously new soources) you'd have to create a new model with it's associated model.cfg file with the anims defined and either leave as is (in mlod p3dm format) or use BIS's binarize to combine the model & the model.cfg into a new odol v40 p3d model.

[Spooner]

OK, I can't define my own sources then; Thanks! Fair enough, but since I can't use the BIS sources in my description.ext based 3D objects, that means that they aren't available to script-, rather than addon-, based resources. Back to the drawing board, I think