How the heck do you people animate your stuff?

cyze · Post by **cyze** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 12:23 pm

Hello

i've began to develop a small personal project (a tiny game) using irrlicht.
I started it just to polish up my c++ skills, but the last couple of days i've
found myself just trying to find a way to animate my models and importing them into
blender.

First i tried the directX exporter for maya, which works perfect for static
models and vertexanimated models. With bones i get a pointexplosion
with some wierd movement.

With 3d studio max i get no animation exported (using the panda exporter,
the microsoft directx exporter crashes max, using max 7)

The exporter for blender doesn't seem to work at all (the 2.41 version, the
2.34 version that has a modified script dont work at all in 2.41). Exported
.X meshes from Blender doesn't even load in DViewer.

I've considered other alternatives, but as i understand it the only two
formats that have animation support in irrlicht are .X and MD2 right?

and since md2 is a very old there is almost no support for it anywhere.

I tried the free version of QTip for max, and it works perfect, but the free
version only export 20 frames of animation.
The old qdata doesnt seem to work (i get a strange error Loading frame 0
or something).

i did also try the md3 patch and the exporter for max works perfect with
that, and it loads perfectly in irrlict, the only problem is whenever i try to
set the animation speed on the IAnimatedSceneNode i get a crash.

Writing my own 3d format and loader for irrlicht would probably be the
"best" solution but that would take to much time (way to much time
considering its summer

I've googled for some way (in either max, maya or blender) to "bake" the
animations from bones/ik to pure morphbased vertexanimations, since
theese load fine in irrlicht. Strangely i havent found a single way to do it
in any of the programs.

I would prefer a good way to do it in blender, as i miss licenses for maya
and max and have to go all the way to my school if i want to use them.

So my question is; what program do you use to animate your meshes and
how/what do you use to export them into irrlicht?

Acki · Post by **Acki** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 12:47 pm

I create my anims with Milkshape3D !!!
It's a cool, low level editor, but it supports many mesh formats for import and export and I had never any problems with it animations...

But it has not much editing functions...

My workaround is like this:

1. create mesh in 3dsmax
2. export from 3dsmax as *.3ds
3. import to Milkshape
4. create anims
5. export from Milkshape as *.x
6. load into Irrlicht

[/list]

cyze · Post by **cyze** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 2:29 pm

wow that actually worked!

To bad that milkshape only has the very basic animation controls. Not even IK. But if i can export animations to something that milkshape can load (i cant get any animations to load in milkshape when i export to 3ds or md3) , then i've got a solution ^^

TheGameMaker · Post by **TheGameMaker** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 3:50 pm

I think you even can export from max to X, and direck use it.. but only sometimes

(i thik you shouldn´t use bonechains with more than 3 bones...)
but you seem to have lots of money, if your able to buy max, Maya and stuff for a hobbyproject

cyze · Post by **cyze** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 11:51 pm

hehe i sure as hell dont have a lot of money, since im a student. The good thing is that my school have licenses for both maya and max, so i can use them there as i mentioned above =)

At home i just use blender, and it suites most of my personal hobby needs. Would be very good if i could find a way to export armature animations from blender into irrlicht.

needforhint · Post by **needforhint** » Fri Jul 07, 2006 12:39 am

hehe I have all , max, maya, bla bla.... pirated versions of course

. Gonna have to purchase them if I get serious about my hobby. Anyways, first thing I am gonna purchase is Microsoft visual 6.0, since I cant imagine debuging in some other developing program... and I want to compile directX so badly

Anteater · Post by **Anteater** » Fri Jul 07, 2006 2:56 pm

Misfit Model 3D is good for animation.

geekworx · Post by **geekworx** » Sat Jul 08, 2006 8:09 am

Anyways, first thing I am gonna purchase is Microsoft visual 6.0, since I cant imagine debuging in some other developing program... and I want to compile directX so badly

Ummm ... don't you mean 8.0 ... part of the Visual Studio 2005 suite of products.

Baal Cadar · Post by **Baal Cadar** » Sat Jul 08, 2006 9:36 am

Yeah, will be difficult to use recent DirectX-SDKs with Visual C++ 6.
And depedning on the features you need, you don't even need to purchase it, since the Express Edition is free and usually good enough.

hardgeus · Post by **hardgeus** » Mon Jul 10, 2006 4:34 pm

In my opinion, Klasker's Cal3D scene node is your best bet. That's what I'm currently using, and I'm very happy with it. The results I've gotten with the .X format, even from Milkshape, have been somewhat patchy, and the .X and .MD2 exporters for Blender are pretty much broken, in my opinion. People will give you workarounds and this and that, but they're more trouble than they're worth.

I have a skeletal project that will load the paladin model from the Cal3D examples. Note that my build setup is pretty wonky, so you'll probably have to create your own makefile or project file or whatever. You'll also have to copy the paladin directory over from the Cal3D examples into wherever you unzip this stuff:

http://www.hardgeus.com/links/caltest.zip

cyze · Post by **cyze** » Mon Jul 10, 2006 10:13 pm

That Cal3D really looks like something worth checking out. Thanks for the tip.
I will certainly give it a try a little later into the project.

Right now what i do is that i export the models and the skeleton
from MAX using the exporter for Unreal; ActorX. Then i'll import the PSK and
PSA files into milkshape and from milkshape i export to .X.

It works great, but on some models milkshape crashes when i try to load the
PSK (the skin). Anyone had the same problem? Also i need to come up with
some other way, since there's a timelimit of 30 days with milkshape.

hardgeus · Post by **hardgeus** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 12:27 am

cyze wrote:That Cal3D really looks like something worth checking out. Thanks for the tip.
I will certainly give it a try a little later into the project.

When I first looked at the Cal3D stuff I thought it would be too much trouble to deal with...i.e. Cal3D produces many files for one object, I had to use a custom scene node...etc, but after two weeks of screwing with .X and .MD2 I finally broke down and spent the time with Cal3D...I was up and running in two days with better results than I had seen previously.

RapchikProgrammer · Post by **RapchikProgrammer** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 4:49 pm

Ummm ... don't you mean 8.0 ... part of the Visual Studio 2005 suite of products

Well i certainly dont use vs2005! I mean cumon look at its loading time! It takes about 15 seconds to load on ma 2.2ghz and 256 mb ram! And once its running i cant open several web pages or even listen to songs properly its SO HEAVY! And one major problem is windows.h! You need to have platform sdk to compile anything with windows.h! I think whidbey is a headache! So i use vs6.0! Old is gold! Its fast and i open up 5-6 instances of vs6 at one moment with over 10 pages and listen to songs! And even then i can run max or run any demo!

luckymutt · Post by **luckymutt** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 5:55 pm

cyze wrote:Right now what i do is that i export the models and the skeleton from MAX using the exporter for Unreal; ActorX. Then i'll import the PSK and PSA files into milkshape and from milkshape i export to .X.

It works great, but on some models milkshape crashes when i try to load the PSK (the skin). Anyone had the same problem? Also i need to come up with some other way, since there's a timelimit of 30 days with milkshape.

I really don't understand why people using Max feel they need to use this kind of workflow.
Max is plenty capable for all of this...take a little time to learn its toolset.
As far as exporting from Max->Xfile, the PandaXporter does work(providing it was skinned, rigged and animated correctly), you just need to be careful with the settings.

RapchikProgrammer wrote:Well i certainly dont use vs2005! I mean cumon look at its loading time! It takes about 15 seconds to load on ma 2.2ghz and 256 mb ram!

Out of the box it is slow starting, but there are a few settings that will speed it up drastically(like that goffy start page) After turning off the nonsense, it fires up quite fast for me.

RapchikProgrammer wrote:Its fast and i open up 5-6 instances of vs6 at one moment with over 10 pages and listen to songs! And even then i can run max or run any demo!

You must not do much with Max if its running with all those other apps (running smoothly?) ...especially with 256mb ram

vermeer · Post by **vermeer** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 9:48 pm

I really don't understand why people using Max feel they need to use this kind of workflow.
Max is plenty capable for all of this...take a little time to learn its toolset.
As far as exporting from Max->Xfile, the PandaXporter does work(providing it was skinned, rigged and animated correctly), you just need to be careful with the settings.

couldnt agree more.

dhenton(Blender), electron(blender), and many others(many using max) have been very succesful with direct export of x files... me too.