Saving animations from ShowTool
by Andy Schatz · in Artist Corner · 04/22/2005 (3:02 pm) · 2 replies
Feature request:
I don't own Maya, but my artist does. He occassionally makes a mistake and makes an animation cyclic or non-cyclic when I want it the other way around. It would be great if I could save out these global properties without having to use Maya to do it, and I figure that the ShowTool is the best spot to add that feature.
The cyclic/non-cyclic problem crops up fairly often and can totally break gameplay. Other features that do not require modeling tools to edit would be nice too.
Or perhaps there is a way that I can run the animation exporter from command line? That would work instead...
Andy
I don't own Maya, but my artist does. He occassionally makes a mistake and makes an animation cyclic or non-cyclic when I want it the other way around. It would be great if I could save out these global properties without having to use Maya to do it, and I figure that the ShowTool is the best spot to add that feature.
The cyclic/non-cyclic problem crops up fairly often and can totally break gameplay. Other features that do not require modeling tools to edit would be nice too.
Or perhaps there is a way that I can run the animation exporter from command line? That would work instead...
Andy
#2
I'm still getting adjusted to working on a small, distributed team of mostly contractors. And me, just an ugly bag of mostly water!
Thanks for the reply!
04/22/2005 (7:54 pm)
I stand corrected :)I'm still getting adjusted to working on a small, distributed team of mostly contractors. And me, just an ugly bag of mostly water!
Thanks for the reply!
Associate Logan Foster
perPixel Studios
One problem that arises here though is what if your artist makes a change to the file you modified a few months later and doesnt know that you were fiddling with the DTS or DSQ? Now all of a sudden you have a resolved bug back in the mix causing frustration and major annoyances.
What if you change something incorrectly, think it works and then a little while later find the issue... well chances are that you are going to blame your poor artist for a fix he/she knows nothing about and from their end is setup correctly.
Or what if there is some bug for some strange reason in the DTS or DSQ file that you export from Show Tool? Well chances are that you will be blaming your artist for the problem and telling him to fix it when on his end it is fixed and working properly.
These are just three possible examples of many why it is best to work and build only from the original source files. Keep everything clean and organized and you will save yourself problems in the long run.
Yes it would be nice if we had this functionality so that someone can make "just one small change" but lets seperate the dreams from reality here. The reality is that Show Tool is here to troubleshoot your art before it goes into the engine, its essentially a clean environment where very little can go on to cause an issue with the art, this way you can thoroughly test the files and be certain that they are ready to be integrated into the engine. It is not an editing tool, nor a modeling program, its just here to allow us to know where a problem lies so that you don't get programmers and artists arguing over who is at fault for a problem and can move onto a solution ASAP.
Logan