Animated model borked in .ms3d & .x (ok in .b3d!)

JP · Post by JP » Thu Jan 06, 2011 7:39 pm

Hello all!

So I was using my mad animation skillz to take a static helicopter model and make the rotors spin round as if powered by the devil himself.

My animation app of choice was Milkshape 3D (yeah sure not great for animation in general but fine for this job) and seeing as the .ms3d format is support in Irrlicht and support animation I figured I'd leave it in that format.

But no... instead of the rotors spinning the whole helicopter spins round apart from a few vertices which stay still causing the geometry to spazz out big time...

So then I tried .x to see if that helped and it sorted out the vertices that weren't moving but still the whole helicopter span round rather than the rotors.

Last chance... I turned to .b3d and joy of joys it works! So I'm happy but I thought I'd throw it out here to see if anyone knew what could be causing the issue and if not then consider thyself enlightened!

Basically both the rotors are seperate mesh groups from the rest of the helicopter and they're the only geometry skinned to the two seperate joints that control their rotation. The animation is just a simple rotation around a single axis, nowt clever.

I've uploaded the models here in case any one fancies a looksie (the problems are evident in the mesh viewer example):

http://www.mediafire.com/?dw2y7fa2h9o16c3

hybrid · Post by **hybrid** » Thu Jan 06, 2011 9:58 pm

Yeah, sure, I'll take a look. Sadly it's not b3d with a problem, because I'm already working on that loader for Auria

hybrid · Post by **hybrid** » Fri Jan 07, 2011 12:23 am

Ok, b3d fixed again, but your meshes make some more problems. The .x file is somehow broken. MView from Microsof does not want to load it at all. the ms3d file seems to have broken joints, I need to find the cause for this still.

JP · Post by JP » Sat Jan 08, 2011 10:46 pm

Got another problematic .ms3d file here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?c5sg25ek1o54u6h

Just a very simple tree model (cone & cylinder) with diffuse colouring on the materials, no textures.

the .ms3d file loads and most of the triangles on the base of the cone appear to be missing and half the triangles in the cynlinder seem to be missing too.

exporting from milkshape as .b3d sorts out the polys. Both models render in black for me but that's probably just bad material setup or something so I should be able to sort that myself!

This is using Irrlicht 1.7.1 incidentally and Milkshape 1.8.5 beta 1, if that would help shed any light on the problem!

hybrid · Post by **hybrid** » Sat Jan 08, 2011 11:53 pm

Well, I just went through the other ms3d file. It's completely broken as well. The weights are mostly 0 or -1, as well as the vertex indices. This makes no sense at all, I'd say that the exporter sucks as hell. I'll look at the other mesh, too, though.

hybrid · Post by **hybrid** » Sun Jan 09, 2011 12:57 am

Sorry to say, but this mesh also seems to be weirdly broken. Some of the faces are simply in the wrong winding order. So if you turn off backface culling, you get a full cone at least. But the trunk is still open, so there are faces which are completely missing.
for me, both models are rendered in colors btw. Top green, bottom brown. Seems to be ok, also lighting if enabled (more or less, very simple model). So I guess the ms3d exporter is not yet usable. Better stay with b3d

JP · Post by JP » Sun Jan 09, 2011 2:30 pm

I've never had any problems with .ms3d files before... in say Irr 1.5 and before... not sure if I've got a newer version of Milkshape3D than I was using before... that could cause it.. or maybe something in irrlicht has changed... though if you say that the models seem broken from looking into the data then maybe it is something to do with Milkshape...

Ahh well, only takes one more click to export it as b3d instead of ms3d so I can survive!