splitting and mixing animations

[terrorchrist]

hey guys!

I am thinking about creating a multiplayer first-person shooter.
Therefore I'd like to split the animations of my models and create a class that puts them together in realtime.
for example: I'd like to export not the whole animation from 3ds max, but only the anim of the upper body and the one of the lower body so I can just tell my program to move the upper bones of my model this way, and the lower ones that way.

I think this really sounds simple, but in fact this is a lot of work...

Can you tell me if there is already a project concerning this animation mixing, or if an exporter exists (for 3ds max) that can cope with exporting only the animations of specific bonegroups?

[Guest]

Nothing special to do it.
set up your keyframes for each portion of animation, like frames 0-100 for the upper body stuff and frames 101-200 or whatever for the lower boy stuff.

In Irrlicht, you just call what frames you want it to animate when you want them too.

learn to use the search function too

[Guest]

what? you mean that, when I export a moving hero from 3ds max with panda directx exporter as x-file, I can use the Irrlicht Engine to play different animations on different bones simultanously?
HOW?

[luckymutt]

By searching and reading the API.
there is a funstion along the lines of:
setFrameLoop() and a few others

look about

[michael520]

I have the same question, terrorchrist.

I am simulating a car, with rolling wheels. It's simple in 3ds max to do this, but if you want it to play in irrlicht, it's not easy! First, exporters like PandaX can only export single mesh in 3ds max. If you use pandax to export a car animation, you will find that the different part of the car are put in (0,0,0) coordinates.

I found some ways to solve this problem: using md2/md3 format. But I haven't found a good exporter for them in 3ds max.



Hey, if you found a way, please tell me

[Terrorchrist]

@luckymutt

I already read the api, but I am not sure how this functions should help me...

I could create an array with pointers to all the bones of the upper body and one for all the bones of the lower body (with yourMS3DAnimatedMeshSceneNode->getXJointNode("BoneName");)
and then tell the upper body bones to follow one animation while the lower bones follow the other one

BUT there seems to be no function that makes it possible to call an animation from an x-file by name (as it exists for MD2 files)

so... do I have to add all the wanted animations (run, walk, walk left, jump, ...) to one single animation and then set the frameloop for each bone seperately?

I mean this sounds really CIRCUMSTANTIAL!!!!!!!

[tip]

the irrlicht animation system can only replay, frame by frame, what you've done in your animation modeler.
You've two solutions :
-either you model two objects, load them in two scene node, and the upperbody will be parent of the lower part, with an offset. Then you can call independant animations for each of the scene nodes.
- either you use a blending animation lib, like CAL3D; i'm using in it irrlicht, it's not that difficult to port it.

[terrorchrist]

hmmm.... looks good
I'm gonna give it a try ^^

But is there any tutorial for using CAL3D with Irrlicht?
If so - where? I could not find one...

thanks for all posts guys! I really appreciate that ^^