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Trying to export bend animation

by Thomas \"Man of Ice\" Lund · in Artist Corner · 02/29/2004 (3:03 am) · 1 replies

I have a shark model, where I try to move the fin to mimick "swimming". I do this by bending the rear of the shark.

The animation shows up fine in max 5, but I simply cannot get it to export as a dsq. I've tried putting it into the dts itself, and that works fine. The dump file does not show any errors. This is my first experiment with dsq files, so I might be doing something very wrong. I've tried reading all the documentation available, but no go there.

I've tried checking off all checkboxes on the animation helper to try to force the bend to show up.

Dope sheet and everything else is set up correctly too (as far as I can tell - usually I do not have problems with translational/rotational animations)

I must be doing something wrong on the export settings or something. I simply press the "Export -> Sequences" and save the file. I then test it by loading the dts (without sequence) and then try to load a sequence. No errors on the console, but the sequence does not show up in the thread control.

The model can be found here: www.codejar.com/shark03.max

Thanks for your help

#1
02/29/2004 (10:14 am)
Thomas the problem that you are encountering is that you cannot save this type of information in a DSQ file. The DSQ file really only contains node transform data (typically from bones) it cannot hold visibility, IFL, or morph animation data (such as you are trying to use with your bend modifier).

If you wish to continue to use the bend modifier, you will be forced to export your sequence in your DTS file as a morph. If you really must use a DSQ (which you only want to do for sharing animations between models) you will have to setup your model to use a skeletal system and animate with that.

Logan

PS: You only need to have the 'morph' checkbox active on the sequence helper since this is the only type of animation data that you are exporting (and then only on 'enabled', you only use 'forced' when the sequence isn't exporting your enabled animation data correctly).