Various Blender-to-Torque questions
by Walter Yoon · in Artist Corner · 01/09/2004 (6:27 am) · 1 replies
I am using James Urquhart's Blender exporter to model and animate for a martial arts game. Given the rather complex animation required, I have a few questions I would like clearly answered before proceeding with any serious work.
1) What is the conversion rate between Blender units and Torque units? For example, if we have a humanoid character that is 2 meters tall, then how does that translate to both Torque units and Blender units?
2) Do the Blender axis correspond directly to Torque axis? It appears so to me (ie: Z-axis points "upwards"), but I would like to be absolutely sure.
3) When modeling & animating humanoid characters, is the origin point to be treated as the character's center of gravity, or as the level of the floor? Or is the origin point ignored entirely in lieu of using empties/null objects to define floor level, center of gravity, pivot points, etc?
4) When rigging up an armature/skeleton, are there any quirks to keep in mind regarding the rest positions of the bones? For example, does the Z-axis for each bone need to point opposite to the main direction of bend? Are bones not rotated at all during placement, so as to preserve a consistent frame of rotational reference throughout the entire skeleton? Etc etc.
Thank you in advance for your help.
1) What is the conversion rate between Blender units and Torque units? For example, if we have a humanoid character that is 2 meters tall, then how does that translate to both Torque units and Blender units?
2) Do the Blender axis correspond directly to Torque axis? It appears so to me (ie: Z-axis points "upwards"), but I would like to be absolutely sure.
3) When modeling & animating humanoid characters, is the origin point to be treated as the character's center of gravity, or as the level of the floor? Or is the origin point ignored entirely in lieu of using empties/null objects to define floor level, center of gravity, pivot points, etc?
4) When rigging up an armature/skeleton, are there any quirks to keep in mind regarding the rest positions of the bones? For example, does the Z-axis for each bone need to point opposite to the main direction of bend? Are bones not rotated at all during placement, so as to preserve a consistent frame of rotational reference throughout the entire skeleton? Etc etc.
Thank you in advance for your help.
Associate James Urquhart
2) Yes. The two coordinate systems are identical. (As in, everything that appears up in blender also appears up in torque)
3) Mesh origin is calculated for the meshes in the shape and the actual shape. Basically the exporter loops through all the verts in all the meshes and calculates bounds for them. The point that lies in the middle of these bounds is the center.
The blender exporter doesn't support "ground frames" (nor do the milkshape, or lightwave(i think) exporters), however it is still very possible to create character models in blender.
Typically if you wanted to rotate your player model round the "center" you would have a bone that sticks out from the ground (bottom where the verts end) and connects to your main skeleton. Then you would simply animate it.
4) I did not write all the bone animation support into the blender exporter. However, i believe rest positions on bones are basically what they look like in edit mode when you select the armature in edit mode (aka not posed).
Basically, if it animates in a particular way in blender, it should animate the same way in torque (more or less).
Hope that helps.