Blend fine, DTS terrible (Animation Problem, Pictures)
by Kevin Roberts · in Artist Corner · 08/21/2005 (10:53 am) · 9 replies
Hello there,
I'm reposting my problem originally posted in the 3d Modeling section of the forums, because it was suggested that I may get more help over here. I'm basically copying the original post with some more info to more fully explain the problem, and here it is:
I animated my robot in Blender just fine, and I must admit I am very proud of his life-like walking (it's a first for me). After a few errors I finally got him to export with two sequences (Walk and Shoot), but no materials. Upon loading the DTS with ShowTool Pro, I discovered my sequences were completely frazzled by the exporter. Then I remembered how I fixed the animation in my simple one-sequence, two-bone model, by using a little doo-hickey called "Apply Size and Location". Apparently it's needed to export properly. After "Applying Size and Location" and exporting once more, my shooting animation was working perfectly, but my walking animation remained a little frazzled, here are some comparison snapshots taken in generally similar increments:
Blender
ShowTool Pro
As you can see, when I want his arm to go down to the ground, he goes up, and way in front. The arms also seem to always be more forward on his torso in the DTS than in the .blend. I tried other things, I tried setting the keyframe to LocRot instead of Rot, and nothing happened. I tried setting location keyframes for all the bones in all the frames, and it did nothing. I'm truly baffled. I'm thinking it may be a problem with the way I set up the bones. Must all the bones be part of one chain? The torso's bone is not the parent of the arm bones, I just thought it would be easier to animate that way. Note, they are still part of the same armature though. If anyone has suggestions on how to fix this, I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks!
I'm reposting my problem originally posted in the 3d Modeling section of the forums, because it was suggested that I may get more help over here. I'm basically copying the original post with some more info to more fully explain the problem, and here it is:
I animated my robot in Blender just fine, and I must admit I am very proud of his life-like walking (it's a first for me). After a few errors I finally got him to export with two sequences (Walk and Shoot), but no materials. Upon loading the DTS with ShowTool Pro, I discovered my sequences were completely frazzled by the exporter. Then I remembered how I fixed the animation in my simple one-sequence, two-bone model, by using a little doo-hickey called "Apply Size and Location". Apparently it's needed to export properly. After "Applying Size and Location" and exporting once more, my shooting animation was working perfectly, but my walking animation remained a little frazzled, here are some comparison snapshots taken in generally similar increments:
Blender
ShowTool Pro
As you can see, when I want his arm to go down to the ground, he goes up, and way in front. The arms also seem to always be more forward on his torso in the DTS than in the .blend. I tried other things, I tried setting the keyframe to LocRot instead of Rot, and nothing happened. I tried setting location keyframes for all the bones in all the frames, and it did nothing. I'm truly baffled. I'm thinking it may be a problem with the way I set up the bones. Must all the bones be part of one chain? The torso's bone is not the parent of the arm bones, I just thought it would be easier to animate that way. Note, they are still part of the same armature though. If anyone has suggestions on how to fix this, I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks!
#3
One more note Joseph, I accidentally sent you the wrong version :P. But your advice probably still sticks, thanks a lot.
08/21/2005 (1:09 pm)
Thanks a lot, I didn't even realize where my empties went, I must have screwed them all up when I selected everything and did apply size and rotation, and scaled my guy down because he was too big... I always assumed I had hid them. One question though, when you're saying that I shouldn't mix different keyframe types, does that mean I can't have a keyframe that changes a bone's location and rotation, or that I can have that, but not just suddenly switch to scaling for another keyframe?One more note Joseph, I accidentally sent you the wrong version :P. But your advice probably still sticks, thanks a lot.
#5
Thanks!
08/21/2005 (1:55 pm)
Quote:The torso's bone is not the parent of the arm bones.I also think this was part of the problem. After parenting the arm bones to the chest, the animation seems to be much more similar in both blender and the show tool. I'm going to redo his animation with this setup and see how it ends up... though I'm anticipating problems, since in Blender he is supposed to move up and down, while in the show tool he doesn't :/. In fact I'm sure I'm going to need to enlist your help again in the near future, but I'm taking a little break right now :P.
Thanks!
#7
08/21/2005 (7:07 pm)
That's very good advice, and without asking someone I never would've known that the first bone can't move :P. Thanks for the info.
#8
I have already some experience with Blender animation creating .mov files, but not yet with the dts exporter. I love GreyBeard's video tutorials. Would there be such a tutorial that show dts animation, or would there be instruction somewhere else?
I've been experimenting with no success.
Thanks,
Tatjana
11/06/2005 (11:55 pm)
How does one learn how to do the dts animation in Blender? I have already some experience with Blender animation creating .mov files, but not yet with the dts exporter. I love GreyBeard's video tutorials. Would there be such a tutorial that show dts animation, or would there be instruction somewhere else?
I've been experimenting with no success.
Thanks,
Tatjana
#9
Check out Nigel Symes' video tutorials. They are about using blender with Torque and there are a couple on animation.
11/07/2005 (12:07 am)
Tatiana,Check out Nigel Symes' video tutorials. They are about using blender with Torque and there are a couple on animation.
Torque Owner Vincent BILLET
Default Studio Name
It seems this step (ALt-R) Is essential to animations.