Mesh exports but no animations

#1 Sorry James, the only thing I have animated in LW and then used in TGE has been the ships from my pirate game, and they don't have any node attachments of deformations yet, just simple bobbing over the waves as they move sort of stuff.

Are the animations exported in the dts shape, or as a dsq?

If you want to send me a screen shot of the LW2dts exporter with your setup, I may be able to spot what you are missing, but no guarantees.

#2 Thanks Todd. I'll send you some screenshots when I get home tonight if I can't sort it out before then.

The animations are included in the dts shape labeled root & run. When I look at the dts in Showtool, I can see the two sequences listed with times and frames but there is not mesh deformation... wait, I never thought to see if the bones were animating but not effecting the animation. I'll check that tonight too.

Something tells me it's most likely a simple thing - these tend to be :)

#3 Okay, back to square one.
Todd was kind enought to go over my settings in the exporter menu but didn't notice anything out of place.
I've been looking at a past test and Dave's examples and can't for the life of me see where the differences really are.
I'm stumped but I haven't given up. Here's the set up:

Lightwave 8.5 (Mac)
1. Mesh and bones export successfully to *.dts
2. animation sequence list is exported with the *.dts (I can see them in Showtool Pro)
3. animation lengths are correct
4. the bones however are not animating in the *.dts (therefore no mesh deformation). Nothing. Nada.

So what i'm thinking is that there is something weird about how I set up the skeleton but I can't see what it is. I used IK booster to get everything running (as I did in a test previously) so I don't think that's it.

Does anyone have any idea what I'm missing here?

Thanks

#4 Try animating a simple shape without the skeleton. See if it exports.

#5 Thanks Bruno, that help in finding the solution.
The character mesh would animate but not the bones, so I check the output window and noticed (this is embarrassing) not a lot of the bones were in fact being exported... if fact pretty much none!!!
...(in a quiet voice) I forgot to check them to be included with the export.

Okay, another lesson in the RTFM department. We've all done it right? Say yes. please...

...nuts...

Thanks for the help Todd and Bruno :)

#6 Hi jame my problem is similar!
hablas espa

#7 Wow, I should have spotted that in your setup james. neve even clicked.

#8 Todd, there's no way you would have. The list uses a scoll tab (I didn't see it until I went looking for node association) and it would look to you like I had selected the all the nodes... because one would think I would know that :P

Sorry Fanatic, I don't speak Spanish. I'll post a screen shot of what I did... or didn't do as the case maybe :)

#9 Here we go Fanatic.
In the plugin panel go to "Animation".
The area circled at the bottom is where you want to go:



The first bone/node entries are visible and I selected them to export rotation and position.


BUT I didn't notice the scroll bar on the right. Guess what? That's where you will find the other bones and you select them to export as you did for the first 4.

You see Todd, you would have seen I selected the first 4 entries for export and rightly assumed that I had scrolled through the list to export the others.

... i didn't...

Well, I won't be forgetting that anytime soon :)

edit for clarity

#10 Cool, good to know.

Strangely,what seems to be the last line in the panel right below "rt_thigh" appears to be empty. You would think that the next item would have been visible there? A bit deceptive.