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I find Milkshape is like an instamatic camera. I always found procameras easier to use than point and shoot. The same is happening with Milkshape. I could set up an animation in Maya shortly after starting to learn it yet I can't even do some basic things in Milkshape. The one that's driving me nuts is resizing joints. When it draws a joint the joint is roughly the size of the screen making them impossible to work with. I've tried everything and searched a dozen tutorials but they all avoid joint sizing.

Can't believe how much trouble I'm having getting a simple animation into .X format. I'd use Maya or Lightwave but I can't find a working exporter for either. I tried Gamespace but the interface is beyond belief annoying. Their icon system is the worst I've ever seen and the texturing tools are pretty useless, can't load a UV map. The tutorials are worthless because they assume you have the windows configured a certain way and half the functions I can't even find and the documentation doesn't tell you where they are hidden. Every time some one tries to reinvent the wheel they blow it. I guess Modo pulled it off, it has a stunning interface but the rest tend to make things worse.

Any info on joint resizing would be a massive help. Not sure if Milkshape will do what I need but I'm about ready to give up on .X entirely. Milkshape does have a nice collection of exporters which seems to be it's strength. It was easy to load a UV as well. Just bizzare that there's no obvious way to resize joints. I tried selecting and using scale but that seemed to nothing. All I can think to do is radically resize my model but that seems silly.

First of all, the joints arent as big as the screen. You can zoom in and out by using the scroll wheel. If you dont have one, hold down shift, click (and hold) on the screen you want to zoom in/out and drag your mouse. To move side to side or pan, hold ctrl and do the same as with the zoom.

Actually they are. Check out the capture.

I can zoom and all fine there just doesn't seem to be anyway to resize the joints. I've tried everything I could think of. I've tried every variation on the scale control with no effect including different combinations of Shift, Control and Alt with various mouse buttons. I manually reset the scale with no effect. There has to be a way but the only thing I can think to do is resize the model and try again and see if that affects the joint size. Seems like a silly way to do it.

working with a larger model will appear to have smaller joints.
simply export with a smaller size in the JT exporter.

That's what I was afraid of. Talk about the tail wagging the dog. I've never had to size a model to the size of the joint before. Just can't believe all the trouble I'm having getting animations into game formats. I'm literally running out of software to try. Most don't have working exporters that I can find. Max seems the way to go so downloaded a trial version to see if I could get it to work but apparently even it doesn't come bundled with an exporter. I tried finding the exporter but I was wasting a lot of time and I still have to figure mapping and animation so it's a long term solution at best. Just wish I could find a Maya or Lightwave exporter for .X that worked. Everyone boasts of game support but now one really supports gaming well. Milkshape has the most importers and exporters and ironically it's the cheapest solution. I tried importing a Maya FBX but it came through a pretzel with no animation attached. I can build great looking levels and characters but unless I can get animated characters into games it's all a waste of time.

think outside the circle, max has panda exporter, maya has an exporter as well from memory ( the crazy ) seems to be able to do it effectively.

If your using milkshape I dont see a problem with working ten times larger and switching one component in the exporter to get the size you want.

Perhaps your workflow can run across milkshape at the end so you can benefit from the exporter.

The obj format appears to be a great format when handing over polys and uvs to other packages.

Once you have a workflow pattern written down, its a breeze.

I kept running across references to the Panda exporter but I guess I need to track it down. I was also having a lot of trouble getting a UV texture into Max. It was going to take more time than I can aford now to work out all the issues with Max. I'm sure I'll end up doing things in Max but like most high end packages it has it's own way of doing everything and texturing is far from user friendly.

I blew several days looking for a useable exporter for Maya. The one everyone recommended had a dead download link. A couple of others didn't work and several others I hadn't a clue how to use them with Maya. I never did find an exporter for Lightwave. Just frustriating. Just wish companies would write their own exporters.

I wish I had known that there was no way to resize joints before. I blew most of the day trying to find out how to do something that couldn't be done. Really appreciate you straightening me out on that. I'd given up entirely on Milkshape. Guess I'm too used to higher end packages. Like I say it's the easy to use stuff that I have the most trouble with. I've got a character boned I'm going through the binding process now. Always frustriating because with any package you wind up binding and trying until you manage to get everything assigned. Seems like no matter how hard I try a vertice manages to slip through unbound. Hopefully I'll have a test within the hour.

Thanks again.

Someone pointed me to this site for a .X exporter for Lightwave. Hope it helps.

-Keith

If you get stuck, stop and ask. Many people have been down roads before.
You live in a world with information and the internet that can help you avoid pitfalls and problems.
Set yourself a problem timeframe, say 15 minutes, if that time ticks away and you still have the problem, drop into research mode and start looking at other solutions people describe over the internet.

Missing vertices in assigning is really your workflow issue. Always spin the model around to identify each move you make is true to what your assuming, slow and painful but rewarding at the end.
Modeling, texturing and animation have to be thought of all at the same time.
Know muscle groups from anatomy so you know at a glance what area you are working on etc..
If you have a good 3 eye in your mind the process can be a little easier on the brain.

Draw references for much larger poly models, Create a folder with examples of body parts you can test with. arms and legs can be achieved in one foul swoop, the chest to arm component is another area you should make an example of.

create a text file with the methods and notes you used to achieve that model and its layout.
fall back on them if you forget, increase them if you find a better workflow.

Save all tutorials you find on the net into a web archive, store them on your machine and keep them for reference.

If you get frustrated, your going to lose your concentration, and make the effort appear to be 5 times harder then it should be. Walk away for a while and have a laugh, Identify what makes it hard and shrink those problems in your mind. The relative approach will make things appear to be less complicated then they might actually appear to be.

Personally I own Maya 8 and Milkshape, both compliment each other if used in a streamlined workflow.

good luck with your modeling

I checked out the exporter. I'll try it but sadly it's just for modeller no animation.

I really have been working animation a long time. I go back to Playmation and stop motion puppets before that. Unfortunately in Milkshape it doesn't allow you to select off the 3D window which is bizzare so it took a while to assign everything. Now for the really frustriating part, everything is assigned and I did confirm this but the skin isn't bound. According to the tutorial it should be ready to move. Like I said the simplier they are the harder they are to use. Assigning a vertice to a joint should bind it to the joint so I have no idea why the skin stays put. Guess I'll keep digging. Just wish the companies would surrender and write exporters for the major game formats. If Milkshape can have exporters there's no excuse for the pro packages. The gaming companies may be able to hire people to write export utilities but the indys can't. Just annoying that they all boast game support but virtually none have their own exporters they depend on third parties.

Solved the problem. Got to be in animation mode. The tutorial doesn't mention it but I remembered all the warnings about not being in animation mode. I find most tutorials skip steps which just makes it harder. If I knew the software I wouldn't be doing the tutorial folks.

Thanks everyone. At least I have a fighting chance now.

Well I'll say this resources for gaming ar 100X harder than they need to be to import. I managed to get an animation saved, it pops a bit but it's an animation. Well when I import it into FPSC it seems to come through alright with the texture map and it's posed. Well when I load it into a level there's no map attached, there never is and I have to manually load them it's a bug in the entity builder. Once I attach the map and open the level the figure is posed but it's dead white no texture and no animation. I'll dig through the documentation again and see if I can figure out what's happening but I've blown many weeks of work and a fair bit of cash trying to get this far. Morbid curiousity is driving me on. I have no fantasies about building a working game I'd just love to for once get a moving character in a game. All I've ever been able to do is get them to rotate towards the player when they are very close to each other. That's an ocean away from actual gameplay. The company really needs to license something like Milkshape and and intergrate it into the game engine. It's just too hard to get content in. Signs IV is the only reason I've done so well with levels but levels don't make a game it's gameplay. I've made a lot of progress with level contruction but in truth I've made virtually no progress on animation and gameplay in two months of trying. There's too many potential places for problems. Not sure if it's the Milkshape exporter or FPSC. I have to say it has to be FPSC since the model shows up posed and textured in the Entity builder. It's also posed in the game there's just no animation or texture map. Not sure why it won't accept the texture map when I try to manually select it. That generally works but I've had trouble before with models that refused textures.

Blindingly frustriating. I can make the content I just can't shoehorn it into the engine. Assembling content for games is like having a dozen puzzles mixed up in a single box and a fist full of pieces removed and now you have to assmble them into a single puzzle. There's just too much chaos between the formats. In CG I can take say an OBJ file and for the most part load it into any animation or modelling software and open it and use it. Not so with gaming. Just because it's say .X doesn't mean the software can load it and read it properly. Also no one actually uses .X in their game engine it has to be converted to a proprietary format. Unless the converters work it's a boat in the basement.

Just disgusted with the lack of progress after devoting so much time and energy. It seems like I'm close but not really. All I've accomplished after months of work is an untextured character that's posed. Like I say actual gameplay is an unrealistic fantasy at this point. If the intent is for people to make custom games then there has to be a better way to get content into the game engine. A handful of people may have figured it out but obviously the vast majority haven't since most of what I'm seeing are just the stock characters. I like the fact that levels are fast and easy to build but unless you are happy with the existing enemies it's just too hard to import new characters. I wish some one would come up with a Signs level utility for either importing characters or animating and importing them. Milkshape is more than halfway there but it's needs better intergration with FPSC. What's the point of all the cool new features if you still can't import a character? For my two cents I'd say to back off on new features until some of the import issues are resolved. What's the point of custom levels without custom characters?

If the texture does not load, make sure the texture was in the same folder as the model when you apply it to the character, otherwise the path within the .x file wont know where to load the characters texture and you will have to manually load it. If you exported it as an ascii .x file check out the path to the texture with notepad. that has been posted in these forums at least 1 hundred times, if you spent a little time looking at posts in research mode you would be past that issue.

post a screen of the exporter settings you used within milkshape so we can see what went wrong.

there is a .x to dbo converter and you can code something very quickly by loading and saving within DBP. Some people have made stand alone converters as well.

post a snapshot of or the model file so people can help identify the problems at hand.

Perhaps you have animated something incorrectly in regards to keeping within the frames other models have.
As a guess are arms going the wrong way when you animate?

Are animations ticking or skipping at the rotation point?
as if its skipping a frame near to where it loops.
That could mean the frames used for say the walk cycle is out of step with what your allowed to use as a consistency with all other models.

Why should i have to ask these issues?
You should be presenting the information so we can evaluate the problems. Its like saying guess which hand is hiding the problem to begin with.

Wasting months without asking is frankly very silly, just ask next time.
Break the problem down into a verbose format.

Half of your post is frustration on your behalf, try to leave that at the door, it wont help you get anything done, no one can be blamed for not supplying enough information about your problems your trying to solve but yourself.

If you can just address the problems without saying how terrible it is, you might get more stuff done.

A lot of people here are professionals who are quite wise within the industry, work in many varied fields and also have encountered the problems you might be experiencing.

I cant help you any more if I hear frustration components to the data of your posts. Its not worth my time if your getting frustrated, calm down and be objective about the problems your experiencing, be verbose about the problems at hand, most of the 3d modelers and animators in here like myself have been down these roads before.

I can see your passionate and determined but crying its broken serves you and I no purpose to solve the issues. It may feel like a puzzle now, but keep focused and you may solve a lot of issues that appear to mountains when they are really speed bumps.

"if you spent a little time
looking at posts in research mode you would be past that issue."

I have spent endless hours reading posts on the website on these very subjects. Don't assume that the person hasn't done diligence. Also you say why didn't I say something months ago. Well based on a large number of posts I've read and my own experiences when you post a question that a moderator feels was answered before you get jumped on. Check yourself and you'll see it's pretty common for the first reaction to be coming down on some one for asking. I have devoted a large amount of time to the issue thus the frustriation. And no I didn't make any glaring mistakes. I was having some popping when the last frame and first frames cycled because I couldn't figure out a way to copy the first frame to the last frame so I was having to eyeball it. It was just a test animation so it didn't matter. And the textures were in the same folder. I've got importing static objects down to a science but I've never once had one load with the texture attached. I always have to go and manually load the texture then if I need mulitples I have to copy that one.

I won't waste anymore of your time. I would ask I that you don't assume the worst always with people. I know a large percentage are new to games and animation. I'm new to games but I've been animating for a very long time in fact since the early days and have been a working artist longer than most people on the forum have been alive, not an exaggeration. It is extremely hard to get content into FPSC. Signs is a godsend and I wouldn't have made 10% of the progress I have without it. Unfortunately there is nothing of it's like for animated characters. I'm going to make one more post of some screen caps of the game I was working on then I'm throwing in the towel on FPSC. I'm working with another engine for perfessional work I just though FPSC was fun and fast to work with. Unfortunately the import problems are just eating up too much of my life. There are major problems with gaming and formats, check any forum and a large percentage of posts are about the subject. More posts would be about it but most don't do custom content. It's a serious problem that should be addressed.

Like I say I won't waste anymore of your time.

Joint Size:

File -> Preferences

The size is the diameter of the joint in 3D units
Enjoy

haha so there was a feature, live n learn. silly me.
Your not wasting time, dont take it like that, I just wanted a bit more verbose info.
tell us how it goes down the track, thanks simsmall btw

It's not good to resize your joints. It'll mess up your scale in DBPro. If, instead, you scale your model up to fit the joint size appropriately, all of your models will have about the same size and you won't need to do any manual scaling in DBPro.

It's easier to manage if you just scale your model in milkshape for the joint to fit.

Really? resizing joints has never had any effect on the few things I've created...

Oh yeah.. because when you export a model gives a scaling option ^^

My mistake.