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Dark Basic Classic had a command, I believe it's SAVE OBJECT ANIMATION, that would take any keyframe data you added to a loaded model and save the animation in an external file which could then later be loaded and APPENDED to your model and played.

DBPro release notes say this command is now obsolete and was supposedly going to be replaced with something better. However, as too often seems to happen with DBP, either that never happened or the developers forgot to document the new command(s).

So my question: The output from the SAVE OBJECT ANIMATION in DB classic looks to be .X format even though the DBC example program saves the animation data with a .DAT extension. All I want to do in Dark Basic Pro is load such an animation data file and append it to an object and play the animation. Can I rename the .DAT file to .X and use DBP's APPEND OBJECT command? Do I have to dump all the .X model data and the .DAT animation data as ASCII and get into Notepad to perform surgery on the model (pasting the animation data into the thing and praying?)

Ideas anyone?

I'm not sure about this, so don't take it as gospel, but I believe the SAVE MESH command should do this. I've never had to save an object from the program before though, so I've never used it.

no animation data is stored in a DB mesh

Yeah, I'm pretty certain that for this to work I've got to use the original model in .X format and then append to it the animation data I saved with the SAVE OBJECT ANIMATION command. The output of that command is most certainly .X data as well, even though the dbc programming example I followed saved the data with a .DAT extension.

I appreciate the input though and am willing to give any idea a shot. Right now I'm reading the specification for .X file format in hopes I can use a text editor with the original model and the output of SAVE OBJECT ANIMATION and produce the same result as the now-defunct APPEND ANIMATION command.

The sad thing about all this is that I've managed to write a 25-line dark basic classic program that animates my 3D models in ways far more simple than anything I can possibly buy. I load the model, input a limb # to control from the keyboard, rotate the limb to the position I want it in, and save a keyframe. Repeat 'til done, save animation data, and... damn! screwed again! they removed my ability to play it back in dbpro.

(sigh)

OK, so I'll answer my own question, with many thanks to Ron (username WOLF) for his research and advice on this.

The commands have been removed from DarkBasic Pro and there isn't anything that looks remotely like the "future enhancements" that were added as replacements.

You can, however, use Dark Basic Classic as a WYSIWYG editor to create custom animations for your .X models and then play them back in Dark Basic Pro or any other language/program that understands the .X format.

The output of the old SAVE OBJECT ANIMATION command is basically .X data with the object itself removed -- it's the animation template by itself. Since the APPEND ANIMATION commands are gone in Pro it's pretty useless now. And APPEND OBJECT in Pro barfs on a .X file with just animation data -- it seems to want the object in there as well.

So I cheated. I ran my DBC program that lets me arrange a model's limbs using the keyboard, and takes a "snapshot" as a keyframe, over and over until I save the animation to disk. This is essentially the Sample code for the DBC help example on the APPEND ANIMATION command, with some extra code put in that lets me select a limb and waggle it it back and forth, a command to rotate the model and zoom in/out, etc. It's either #26 or #28 in the DBC examples folder.

Then I opened up the original model's .X file in Notepad, and the animation data file I've just created (also in Notepad), and found the location within the model's file where animation data would go if there had been any (three curly brackets from the end of the file), and pasted the animation data. Oh yeah, I made a backup of my original model first.

Last, I had to remove a tag from the animation data, similar to "xof 0303txt 0032". There's already one at the beginning of the model file and DirectX didn't seem happy having another one in the animation section.

Works like a charm. This pack of 24 human characters I purchased from Geo-Metrics, "jointed but no animation" are starting to come to life now, using Notepad and a crude but effective tool written in DBC that is still far easier to understand than the convoluted interfaces in GameSpace, Milkshape, etc.

Notepad -- the ultimate 3D animation tool.

In blue gui, if I understand correctly, you can create multimedia software, so it can create 3d modellers in dbpro.Maybe....I don't know...

Is that the Blue IDE you mentioned? It's definitely my favorite editor but I can't find anything about using it as a modeler. Maybe somebody out there has written a cool plugin for it that does that sort of thing. Would love to hear more about it if anybody has any info.

ok...it is a blue GUI, it is $20 but can make menus and stuff, I am buying it....let me find the link..
http://www.robertknight.me.uk/blue2/site/
go there.

mx 5kris, thanks for the link. If that software is half as cool as it looks, it should get the prize for add-on of the year. I'm heading off to hack around with it a bit. I'll follow up in this thread with my impressions if anyone is interested...

just give me credits...