Nothing, delete this account.

#1 ...

#2 Nothing, delete this account.

#3 Nothing, delete this account.

#4 ...

#5 ...

#6 Nothing, delete this account.

#7 Sorry to hijack :p

@Joseph, do you still have to use the crazy armature setup to get past Blender using the y-axis bone convention? Or does the exporter handle this now (I seem to recall somewhere that implied it did)?

I managed to get my mesh rigged and weighted (I'm not an artist, so it was no small feat, though IMO the process was easy pretty much) in Blender so that's going to be an issue next I believe (it's not a standard Torque rig, so I can't use the Orange Guy).

Also, does the "weight painting" use vertex groups? I didn't ever explicitly set up any groups so I'm not sure.

#8 ...

#9

Quote:Yeah, the crazy-looking-bones setup is still necessary if you want to be compatible with the standard orc/blueguy dsq files. [snip] You can always create your own animations though, in fact that's pretty much the only option when using a custom rig.

Does that mean since I'm using a custom skeleton (not compatible with the stock DSQs at all) I can just animate and export? I don't need any sort of compatibility with stock Torque skeletons at all (my player class will be custom, not going to look for any standard nodes in fact). Or do I still need to set up a special export rig with bones down the x axis?

Quote:Yeah, weight painting uses the vertex groups, so you should be good to go in that regard.

Awesome. Thanks for your help :)

Edit: Any idea how hard it'd be to add some functionality to core Blender (not scripts I guess) to change which axis bones face down?

#10 ...

#11 ...

#12 Woo! Nice. Now I just need to figure out how to animate well :)

Off topic: Have you tried the heat based skinning in 2.64 (I think that's the ver)? I find it to be glorious. With a well set up rig it "just works" (at least, I have it on good authority my rig is well set up, since I'm not an artist, Russell's opinion on that is high praise for me :P).

#13 ...

#14

Quote:I'm guessing it would require a complete rewrite of all the armature related math code. It's been brought up a few times on the mailing lists and in the Blender foundation forums, but it doesn't seem like anyones chomping at the bit to open that metaphorical can of worms :-) It's also why you don't see many animation importers for Blender, the conversions involved are pretty tricky.

Sounds pretty hairy. I guess they probably set it up that way in order to optimize their math for their y-axis case. It'd be nice if they just bit the bullet and fixed it. I'd do it myself if I could claim any sort of familiarity with Blender's code (and had time...daughter is due in a mere 6 weeks!).

#15

Quote:Yeah, the "bone heat" option is way better than the old "create from closest bones". I've found that I still have to do a little bit of manual adjustment though, especially around the shoulders, butt, and crotch (snicker:) areas.

I imagine for a more human character that would definitely be the case (I might have to touch up the shoulders on my own model). In my case it worked pretty much flawlessly, which given the ease of applying it, I thought was pretty awesome(I had *almost* set it all up based on envelopes, but I was having trouble with the jaws on the snout of my character so I gave the bone heat method a shot...glad I did since I also didn't know that the exporter doesn't work with enveloped heh).

Oh yeah, do you have any idea how to select all bones in the combined pose/weight mode? I couldn't figure out how (AKEY doesn't work). It's not a big deal really, I just kind of wanted to see the weighting on all bones at once.

Also (I'll stop pestering you and hijacking Houssen's thread soon, promise ;)), any tips/links on setting up typical controls for animation on a biped character? I went through most of the info on rigging on the Blender site, which was immensely useful and well set up, but I haven't seen much on how people set up their IK controls for animating walk cycles and the like.

I've been wondering as well whether or not the Walk-O-Matic scripts are suitable for games animations. Have you ever used them at all? I'm not sure they'd even work for my character (which has the backwards chicken leg set up).

#16 ...

#17

Quote:I don't think you can, I could be wrong though :-)

I think you're right, pretty much what I figured.

Quote:I'm still learning on the animation/rigging side of things. I can send you one of my rigs if you'd like to take a look at it. I can't promise that it's anywhere close to being an ideal setup though, and is still very much a work in progress.

Yeah, I am a total newb, and far from being any sort of artist :) I'm amazed I got it rigged at all in a decent fashion. Sending your rig would be an amazing help, finished or not. My email from my profile is probably best.

Quote:I've not used the walk-o-matic scripts, so I can't really say.

After I get all the IK and limits set up I might attempt it, if I get good results I can let you know if you're interested.

Appreciate all the help!

#18 Is there a problem with outer body bones in torque? Since my mech bones are ok on the inside but my human bones don't like to work inside the mesh, I think all my player models will be stuck with outer bones (for some reason my knee bone just keeps deforming the wrong part of the mesh that it has no weight or grouping to).

#19 ...

#20 I've trashed the bone system i had so i can try the rig from orange man but i can see if i have any backup files remaining (i'm still learning so i tend to overwrite alot). I haven't found much luck with mesh deform information except on poopinmymouthDOTcom where i think i learned the feet.. or was that somewhere else.. i'll send my file if you are up for some laughs.