I cant seem to figure this out
I have rigged a 2d arm in 3ds max with bones but i cant seem to figure out how to set it up in unty so that one end (the shoulder) is atatched to the player body and the other end (the hand) is attached to the gun so that when the gun moves the arm follows.
i’ve played about with hinges but to no avail.
anybody got any ideas or sujestions?
Not completely sure what you mean, but from what I understand you want to parent the shoulder and gun to the body?
To do this, simply drag the gun/shoulder onto the torso in the heiarchy(spell?).
Now when you move the torso, everything follows, but you can still move the shoulder/gun independently.
After reading it again, I think the best way would be to split the arm up into 2 separate pieces.
I have tried what you sujested before but the bones it appears are attatched to the plane but the ik chain doesnt seem to effect them the same way that it doeas in max.
spliting the arm isn’t realy an option as the player as a slightly bendy arm but thanks anyway.
there is a way to do this with a 3d mesh (instead of a plane) i’ve seen it done but i cant find any info on it.
There is no built-in/default IK system in Unity, there is only parent/children hierarchy. Once you have say a human skeleton in Unity you can completely sheer off it’s foot or move it up inside it’s torso and Unity doesn’t care, there’s no built in limiters like with a Character Studio biped.
You would need special scripting or programming to be able to move the gun and have the rest of the arm up the chain follow along.
Yes I have decided to use a completely code driven procedural aproach to the problem down to drawing the arm itself with code. 
i’ll keep you guys posted on progress