DTS hierarchy for COLLADA

#1 Hi Bryan,

Does this help you at all?

Quote:Unfortunately beyond that I can't even begin to think how it would expand to fit things like camera nodes and mount nodes, and bones as the node heirarchy

Any camera/mount/bone nodes should appear under the 'start01' node in your example. eg.

+-base01  
  +-detail32  
  +-detail2  
  +-collision0  
  +-start01  
    +-col0  
    | +-colMesh0  
    +-det32  
    | +-detMesh32  
    +-det2  
    | +-detMesh2
    |
    +-pelvis
    | +-left_leg
    | +-right_leg
    | +-left_arm
    | +-right_arm
    |   +-mount0
    +-cam

#2 Thanks for the reply. I've read through that documentation over and over trying to see if I missed anything, but since the scene heirarchy example is wrong as col-1_Mesh and Shape128_Mesh confuses T3D's importer and triggers the auto-heirarchy setup described as the second example at that link (Perhaps Blender doesn't allow _ as a node name character, but I don't think that's the problem). Assuming your correct about camera, mount, and bone nodes being beneath start01 that will be of great help as when exporting to DTS it ends up completely different in the modeling app.

It's been a long time since I last rigged a mesh for walk animations so I don't know when I'll get around to testing it.

#3

Quote:I've read through that documentation over and over trying to see if I missed anything, but since the scene heirarchy example is wrong

You are quite right. If using the 'DTS' style hierarchy, the LOD size needs to be at the end of the mesh name. I'll get the docs fixed up, and add the mount and cam nodes as well so it is clear where they should be hooked up.

#4 That would be great. I'm still at a loss for how to export a rigged character in Blender, but some of that is due to the fact that I have only ever rigged a few characters (and never with Blender) and don't fully understand how it all works.

#5 What results do you get in T3D at the moment? Is it just the LOD that is causing your problems, or something else?

I'm always happy to take a look at exported models if you are able to send them to me.

#6 I still havn't exported an rigged character to COLLADA as I just don't understand the node heirarchy well enough when combined with the strange way that Blender stores it's bones in an armature group. I did try to export the Orange Guy model grabbed from another thread here into DTS but it crashes T3D and doesn't leave any errors. I've been meaning to post a thread asking about that but just have too much other stuff going on since it's probably something to do with my never actaully using the DTS exporter and not knowing what settings need set.

If I could get a hold of a basic fully rigged character with all the nodes that T3D can handle, and already saved in a .blend file so it's ready to export, that would probably be the most help to me as I would have something to compare with, but my current troubles are just being chalked up to the fact that I've had to spend all my time learning through trial and error and don't really trust messing with a rigged character just yet due to all the trouble I had figuring out the node heirarchy for a clean COLLADA export and import of a static object.