IRRLicht user need a Mesh Animator.

[christianclavet]

Hi. I'm using primilary Lightwave to model my meshes. Checked all over the forum an seen all over the forum that I'm not the only ony having a hard time bringing their animated mesh into Irrlicht.

What we would need is a tools that could take a mesh (static or animated) and permit to "tweak" and animate it as poses (MD2) or boned (.X) format.

I've tried bringing my Lightwave exported to .X format animated meshes. The animation seem to work, but the mesh is all distorded (Done Weighmaps and tried to fix this but it's not working). Other user for other types of software exept Blender have a hard time too. A Static mesh import without any problem.

It would be great is the mesh viewer could be expanded and allow us to fix the bones, weighmap (Correct the .X files, It's seem that every 3D application have their standard for writing a .X file) and create poses (as an MD2). Also I never saw a DirectX .X file with ability to get multiple animation in the same file. That could be all setup in the same editor (Could be used as a new addon like IRREDIT, but for directed to animated mesh instead of the environnement.

I don't have the programming skill to be able to add this. I just hope that some some IRRLicht expert user will see the need for beginner and "noob" to get their mesh animated in IRRLICHT.

At the moment, since I've only heard that Blender is able to export correct .X animated mesh into IRRLICHT (Execpt that they have to tweak it a little (reverse the normals)). So I'm doing now, is learning this software to get it to work, but it's not a simple one, because it's a complete system with lots and lots of features. That caused me to stop developping my demo an learn that other environnement.

[hybrid]

.x is the most awkward file format you could use. Try another one, b3d or ms3d seems to be a good choice. But several people with a deeper arts background will tell you more about this.
There is no way to export meshes from within Irrlicht. So no way to fix meshes in an Irrlicht app. There are other tools which do a better job on this. The thing is that we need feedback from tool users, esp. example meshes which fail to load correctly. We have to fix the arts pipeline, but the first thing is to fix the loaders into Irrlicht.
BTW: There is a lwo loader for static meshes on my webpage (IIRC, these mesh loaders were done so long ago...) Maybe this helps you a little.

[vermeer]

Blender and b3d format seems to be a nicer combination.

BTW, I know well that Ultimate Unwrap unwrap3d.com exports *.b3d and *.x files that will load well into irrlicht(and support a royal load of I/O other formats as well, for convert animations) . But if u don't have those 50$, you can go for Blender and the b3d exporter. Really, seems x format has too many probs for the users. I tend to deal well with x, but I know the format and its pipelines since very long. Exporting from Blender, b3d and md5 are way more problem free. Someday in the future we will have md5 loader for irrlichtr, and is definitely a format I will also recommend, if has no probs in irrlicht.

What is sure is x and b3d can load well, in the experience of many users , into irrlicht, but is tricky, to say the least, in the case of x.

I have exported quite a bunch of weights&bones animated characters, succesfully, from blender, including x, b3d, md5. So, that is a fact...Can be done correctly.

[christianclavet]

Hi, Hybrid and Vermeer. Thank for your responses and suggestions!

Hybrid, Thanks for your Lightwave loader, but it's only a .LWO (Mesh only no anim info). Lightwave use 2 files. an ASCII .LWS (Lightwave Scene) file with the informations relative to bones, object and hierachy. Actually a static mesh import is not a problem, IRRLicht can handle my static .X mesh and display it properly. It's when I export animation data that the problem occur.

If you need someone to push some artwork to test mesh format you can contact me. I have DEEP Exploration (Right Hemisphere) That I use mostly to convert to other format, but MS3D and B3D is not there.

For the environnement, I model in Lightwave and "light" the scene in Gile[s] then export the completed scene in .B3D format to IRRLICHT.

Vermeer. So I was ok, to start learning Blender. Thanks for the confirmation. I'll try to check out also for Ultimate Unwrap, if it can save me some time. I would like to have mostly completed my demo by the end of september.

I only want to animate some peoples waiting (waiting for the bus or train). I want to make at least 6-7 kind of model with different textures. (I've not stopped that part since there is no problem there.), but I'll wait for the animation part. Until I find a way to import them correctly into Irrlicht

[christianclavet]

Hi.

I've checked in detail why the mesh was so distorded when I was exported in directX from Lightwave.

After lots of tests and efforts, I've found out that the mesh exporter can output something that IRRLICHt can take.

Lightwave bones have a range of influence over the vertices and this information was not put in the weightmaps. The exporter documentation is in japanese, and I'm unable to understand all the options.

There was a button with some parameter that permitted to add the bone influence to the weightmap. But was really not evident to find how it worked. I've been able to export my test mesh correctly for the first time.

I think, I'll write a tutorial on how to use this exporter correctly. Most user cannot use it and try (like me) to find something else.

At the moment, the mesh I have seem to be animated correctly, I only will have to find out to animate a "range" of frames for a specific action. This should be in the Irrlicht SDK, I'll just have to check it out.

I've checked the tools available (Demos). And the tools that could do most of the job is Milkshape. The tools for bones are interactive so it should be easy to use. I've checked in Ultimate unwrap and bones tools are there but seem to be only numerical (no direct feedback).

Since I've found a way to export direct from Lightwave in Direct .X, my problem is "fixed". But this kind of tools should be interesting to have (Kind of rigger and animator for meshes). Other user using different software could have the same problem as I had.

I have not seen a tool yet that is dedicated to this purpose.

[hybrid]

Descriptions on tool usage are always welcome. You can put them into the FAQ forum and/or into the Wiki.