Max2DTS Tutorial Complete

#1 Excellent work Brandon! EXCELLENT. This should get some of my lazy artists going, they can't figure it out... or maybe they just don't want to :/

#2 Thanks very much! Was looking for something like this for ages!

#3 Ye i agree with the above guys.
Really wonderful Guide .
Thanks !!!!!!!

#4 Awesome guide Brandon.

Thanks!

#5 Looks good, a bit too late though. Just figured out all this crap a couple of weeks ago. =)
I only skimmed quickly through the tutorial, but one thing that I noticed; Why do you use the curve editor to set the sequence start and end keys? I at least find it much smoother to use the Dope sheet.

#6 You have a point Magnus... I usually have the curve editor up on the second monitor during animation, and I guess I'm just lazy and use it. :)

Shame on you for not writing the tutorial FIRST!! I also fought the exporter, and could find no docs covering the details. Since you figured it out before me, you could have made the tutorial and saved me 2 dozen knots on my head :p hahaha

B--

#7 Well I for one am grateful for this, will be exporting a character this week and I'm sure this will save me some headaches lol... though I'm not using Biped, do I still need to name the root node "Bip01" ?

#8 Maththew: I don't think the Bip01 node name is as important as its linkage. Stick with the basic schematic linkage setup and you should be fine. Let me know if there are some areas that are unclear or confusing. Hope it helps you out a little.

B--

#9 Actually, skeleton nodes are hard coded into a table in player.cc/h, so if you do not use the stock skeleton, you'll need to modify your code. Additionally, the stock animations also require standardized naming conventions for use. In this particular case (since you mentioned the model isn't a biped), the stock animations probably won't apply in any case.

#10 Hmm thx for the feedback...

yeah not using stock skeleton, have a max skeleton I have set up... though its for a four legged creature (one of the reasons biped wouldn't work), will I hit problems trying to export it into Torque (also have my own animations for it)?

#11 Matthew: Around line 313 of player.cc there is a block of code that defines the spine with reference to the name 'Bip01 Spine, Pelvis, etc." It seems to use this for updating the animation tree and shadow center location. Good job catching that Stephen!

Other than that I didn't see anything else Bip01 related in player.cc or player.h. I wouldn't think that would be too hard to get your quaddraped going in torque. But as you know, what can seem simple can take months!

Let us know how it goes.

B--

#12 Can you make a simple tutorial for exporting a static mesh? That'll help my artist alot. :)

#13 Well got the Model to export and the first .dsq exported :) Though I did hit a problem... since I had to scale it way down my transformation screwed up (so the character is far below the objects center). I did the "box trick"... by created a new box, aligning it in the center of the bounding box, attaching the character mesh, select the box by "element" and delete it, then rename the mesh to the original name, except when I export it comes up with no errors but gives me a .dts file of 4KB vs 99KB... (obviously) it didn't export most of the data, just the bones =/

#14 @Karl: Read the documentation, there's an example of how to export a static mesh there. The docs are currently a bit messed up at this site so you can access them at http://fosters.realmwarsgame.com/maxdts/ for the time being.

@Matthew: A lot could be wrong here... Sounds like you forgot to put something back together after doing the "box trick". You did reapply your skin modifier right? =)

#15 Ouch, lol (ok that was probably a "duh" category thing - keep in mind I'm a programmer =/)... no didn't reapply the skin modifier. Is there a way to save out the weights or the envelopes so I won't have to tweak that again ?


btw thanks for posting that link, I have it on my home pc but not on my work one (on that one right now), when Karl asked thought about the simple shape tutorial instantly :)

#16

Quote:Is there a way to save out the weights or the envelopes

Well, yes, and no, and maybe, and sometimes.... =)

In the skin modifier on the "Advanced Parameters" rollout there's a save and load button. Saving and loading envelopes won't work that well though when you've changed the scale of the objects (when you load them again, they will be scaled...). If you bake the envelopes to the vertices ("Bake Selected Verts") it may work...
Another way is to simply right click the skin modifier in the stack before doing the box trick and select cut, then after the box trick you can paste it back (I'm not entirely sure if this works with envelopes and changed scale though, you may get the same results as save/load).

#17 Hmm, thx for all the different methods, I'll give them all a try tonight. Since I'm scaling down, saving them out, then doing box trick, then loading them in, would they work ? Since the box trick only affects the transform info. Hmm... I'll definately run through these tonight, thx :)

#18 I'm not quite sure actually. You'll have to try it. Try to both save and load when the transforms are the same (that is, when the model is at 100% scale). That may work, I think the time it crapped out on me I had different scale values between the time I saved and loaded.

#19 @Karl: The Official Torque docs cover static dts shape export quite nicely, but just ask if your artist has any questions.

B--

#20 The link Magnus posted is to duplicate documentation from Logan of the Official Max2DTS docs (since the official ones seem to be down since the site change).