Hi Guys,
Sometimes when you export your model and play it in DBP and nothing seems to animate, one common reason is that you exported with the 'keyframes per second' option which multiplies the output keyframes by a particular value (usually 24 or 30). This means when you play your model animation, it appears to stand still but in fact is playing EXTREMELY slowly. To solve this, you can either increase the speed of the object animation in DBP, like so:
load object "exportedmodel.x",1
loop object 1
set normalization on
set object speed 1,10000
sync on
sync rate 60
do
set cursor 0,0
print object frame(1);"/";total object frames(1)
sync
loop
Or you can return to your export settings and ensure that your keyframes are saved out 1:1 so there is no buffering in respect of keyframes per second which DBP does not need. As a side note, FPSC requires that keyframes are saved out 1:1 and a good way to check if your export is padded with large keyframe values is to open your text exported X file in NOTEPAD and scroll right to the bottom. You will see the animation data and the keyframes look like this:
72000;16;1.000000,0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,1.000000,0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,1.000000,0.000000,-28.893299,-0.070957,-61.798553,1.000000;;,
72192;16;1.000000,0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,1.000000,0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,1.000000,0.000000,-28.893299,-0.070957,-61.798553,1.000000;;;
As you can see, the first value of each sequence of numbers denotes the keyframe index and you can see in this case the buffering is extreme with one keyframe at 72000 and the next at 72192. There will be a setting somewhere in your exporter with a value of 192 which you can change to 1 (or some parallel value representing the same setting).
Also be aware when you export a model is the 60 bone limit, and ensure that all meshes within the model use less than 60 bones to animate the geometry.
Also remember that no more than 4 bones can influence a vertex if you are using a shader, such as a model in FPSC.
Another quick way to test whether your X file is a good export is to run it through the DirectX Viewer. If your model looks wrong there, there is little DBP will be able to do to fix it as the original data is gigo. In this case, return to the exporter and alter settings, or switch exporters.
I drink tea, and in my spare time I write software.
