Need Advice On Workflow

[dlangdev]

Hello,

I need some good advice on what would be considered the right tool for the job.

Basically, I'm attempting to create a game that will have the following characteristics:

1) It's a rescue mission.
2) The protagonist goes through rooms occupied by a martial artist.
3) In each room, the protagonist must fight and beat the martial artist in order to get to the next room.
4) At the end, the protagonist fights the boss and rescues the objective.

Now, here's my workflow.

For static meshes, such as level maps and props, my tools are the following...

1) Maya-->Blender-->Giles-->IrrlichtEngine.
2) Blender--> Giles-->IrrlichtEngine.
3) Maya-->Giles-->IrrlichtEngine.

For animated characters such as the protagonist, martials artists and the boss...

1) Maya-->MilkShape--> Fragmotion-->IrrlichtEngine.

What is working for me are tools for creating static meshes and levels. They work pretty good for me and it definitely fits the bill. See image below.





What is not working for me are the workflow for animated meshes.

I make the model in Maya...



Then export it to MilkShape to add the bones.



Then export it to Fragmotion in B3D format so that I can add the animated moves.



Well, what's wrong with this flow? The face normal flips when it gets to Fragmotion. That's where it gets out-of-whack.

I need advice on what tools I should use for animated nodes.

Thanks and have a nice day.

[JP]

Presumably there's a problem with the Milkshape b3d exporter or the Fragmotion b3d importer. Probably the latter if the b3d works fine in irrlicht or other apps.

You could use blender for the animation instead... or just reverse the faces in Fragmotion (if possible, if not then reverse them in Milkshape before exporting).

[dlangdev]

Hi JP,

After reading your post I did go back to MilkShape and flipped the normals. Then exported it to Fragmotion and finally got it displaying correctly.

Moreover, I did find some interesting observations.

1) It turned out some of the faces were already flipped inwards way back when why I was modeling in Maya, because when I exported it to OBJ and imported in MilkShape the faces showed up as black. So, I have to know how to model correctly in Maya, make sure the normals are oriented properly.

2) In MilkShape, when I added the joints and binded the bones to the vertices, it all worked great. But I found something worth remembering. When I did one animation in MilkShape, the speed was determined by a slider, I set the slider to a normal position. Now, when I exported the file to B3D, something got messed-up. It looks like the slider value changed because when it got imported into Fragmotion, the animation speed became so slow the model was moving one keyframe per second. With that, I think there is something that needs to be addressed in MilkShape when exporting animation to B3D.

[dlangdev]

OK, I figured out what's causing the animation to crawl.

I had to tweak the prefs on MilkShape and Fragmotion.

Just set the FPS to 30 instead of 24 in MilkShape and 1 in Fragmotion.

They both animate correctly now.



Looks like I'm all set, my animated mesh workflow is now clean and ready.

Thanks.