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DarkBASIC Professional Discussion / Blender .3ds and .x in DBP with animation?

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Ninjazz
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Posted: 20th Jun 2010 21:00
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Alrighty, I've spent ages looking through the forums here trying to find some help on this, but I haven't had much luck. My problem is that I have a model and animation I created in Blender, which I then try to load in DBP. It loads just fine (contrary to a lot of problems I've been seeing on the forums) except for one thing... there's no animation. >_<
So I tried exporting as a .x file.... my DBP program crashes when it tries to load the model. Blammo.
I've tried suggestions people have made in the forums, even went as far as getting custom .x exporters for blender that someone said worked for them... no luck, no change. Either I get a perfectly fine but unmoving .3ds or I get a crashed program.

Can anybody help me out here or give some advice? This is driving me crazy, with no small amount of headaches.

The difference between a boy and a man: The boy thinks he is a man, the man wishes he were a boy again.
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Duke E
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Posted: 21st Jun 2010 02:05 Edited at: 21st Jun 2010 02:15
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You sort of contradict yourself, first you say it loads o.k in DBP then you say the .x file crashes DBP. You must have exported a .x file to load it in the first place?

(Edit: Ah, you use 3ds. I did not see that in the end of the post.)

I assume you are using Blender 2.4X?
and you have this problem:
the .x model exported without animation = o.k.
the same .x model exported with animation = crash.
Answer:
It is the Blender model that is the problem even before you export it.

You have to check the weight painting and the weights for all the faces, the weight has to be 1.0. All faces on the models skin has to be associated with a bone also.
When i started using blender it took a couple months to become proficient with using it with DBP, be patient and make a lot of test models to export before tackling fully rigged skeletons.

There is a quick and dirty (or easy) way to weight paint the model, "Create From Bone Heat". greenlig made a nice tutorial here
http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=149298&b=3 the results are not as good as manually weight painting the models though.

Use Kiras excellent Blender exporter http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=166987&b=3, the one included in Blender has a lot of errors in it making the exported model unsuitable for DBP.

Regards
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Ninjazz
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Posted: 21st Jun 2010 05:50
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Thanks for the response.
I am using blender.... I think 2.49b.
Is there a quick way to check my model for vertices/faces not assigned to a bone?
Originally when I created the model and started animating it I used bone heat for it, then went through and re-painted vertices as needed. I know some vertices have been painted with lower amounts of weight. (such as .5 or .25) Does everything need to be painted just as straight 1 or 0?

I looked over Kira's exporter and will try it. I also looked over the tutorial link you sent me. It's a good tutorial but unfortunately doesn't do much to help my current situation.
Most of the things in his tutorial I am already doing, this is simply a complex model.

The difference between a boy and a man: The boy thinks he is a man, the man wishes he were a boy again.
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Duke E
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Posted: 21st Jun 2010 09:49 Edited at: 21st Jun 2010 09:53
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1. Sort of, select a bone while weight painting, "G" grab it and move it with the mouse. Any faces not painted will be stationary and the model skin will "rubberband" from that face so you can locate the faces not painted, now paint the missing faces and they will rubberband back to the model skin (when done clear the loc and rot).
All in all you have to be thorough. Here is a tutorial that shows how to do it: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Tutorials/Animation/BSoD/Character_Animation/Upper_body_weight_painting

2. Yes, for the .x model export to work the weight has to be 1.0 for the painted areas belonging to a bone, see the tutorial above.

Regards
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Alfa x
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Posted: 23rd Jun 2010 00:43 Edited at: 23rd Jun 2010 00:44
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You can use the DirectX Ops to convert a file from a .x version from blender that cannot be read to a version that can be read in Darkbasic. i use blender too, and sometimes I have to make that conversion.

The Apocalypse Viewer does this automatically.

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=156362&b=8
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Kira Vakaan
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Posted: 23rd Jun 2010 04:18 Edited at: 23rd Jun 2010 04:39
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@Duke E: I'm not sure what you're saying. I've had success exporting a model with hand-painted and auto-generated weights using any weight from 0.0 to 1.0. The default exporter automatically normalizes all of the influences on a vertex to 1.0 to make DirectX happy, and this is the same behavior my exporter exhibits (and I'm sure Blender does the same internally). For both exporters, each vertex can have any weight on it in any number of vertex groups (providing the vertex is in at least one group).

Edit: Oh, and .3ds can only store geometry and material data. No animations.

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Duke E
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Posted: 23rd Jun 2010 09:19 Edited at: 23rd Jun 2010 09:23
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Thanks Kira,

Then it is obsolete information. Must have to do with some even more dated Blender DirectX exporter version then. When i began using Blender the information on .x exporting i gathered when having crash problems exporting animated models stated the weights had to be 1.0.

Edit: as i suspected:
http://www.blender.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6475&view=next&sid=c474c3fb743ce4aacfaab5a6ddefa791

Regards
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TyJBr2
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Posted: 24th Jun 2010 02:55 Edited at: 24th Jun 2010 06:10
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Quote: "Oh, and .3ds can only store geometry and material data. No animations.
"


If that is true then why does DarkMatter come with animated .3DS models ?

They work in DBP using instructions from readme.txt in the DarkMatter folder.

How to Use the Models
---------------------

There are several uses for the models and textures
on this CD. The two main reasons for using these
models are game creation and 3D animation.

Game Creation - By using the free trial version of
DarkBASIC on this CD, you can easily get your models
on the screen and moving. Here is a simple set of
steps to make this happen:

1. Install DarkBASIC
2. Select NEW PROJECT
3. Type MyGame in the file entry box and click NEW
4. Press F8 to go to Windows desktop
5. Run Windows Explorer
5. Find the Ninja folder model from the CD. You can
find it under "Models\3DS\People\Ninja"
6. Copy the 'whole folder' to the MyGame directory.
You can find the MyGame directory in the MYPROJ
folder in the area you installed DarkBASIC.
7. You should See MYGAME.DBA file and NINJA folder
in the MyGame directory.
8. Return to the DarkBASIC Editor
9. Type (or cut & paste) the program:
LOAD OBJECT "Ninja\H-Ninja-Move.3DS",1
SCALE OBJECT 1,300,300,300
YROTATE OBJECT 1,180
FIX OBJECT PIVOT 1
LOOP OBJECT 1,5,25
DO
TURN OBJECT LEFT 1,1
MOVE OBJECT 1,0.1
LOOP
10. Press F3 to save your program, then F4 to run!


I know the instructions and DarkMatter is a little old but it works on the 3ds models that are included.
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