Hello, I am new here and I have a big question to Dragonlord

[motorsep]

Hi guys,

I am an indie game developer working on my first game using Dark Places engine. I use Blender as our art tool for modeling/animation. Yesterday I finished few animation sequences for player's model and I decided to see how it is going to look like in-game. I had Dragonlord's SMD exporter (v0.3) on hands and I tried it out. Results came out totally messed up and far as weighting goes
I used fragMOTION to load and test smd files and when I loaded static mesh, I could see that skeleton is offset from the mesh. When I merged animation to than scene, I could see that animation played properly, but mesh was messed up.
Dragonlord, please help us out, fix your exporter.
Here is SVN build of Blender I use (due to extended set of constraints):
http://www.graphicall.org/builds/builds ... how&id=561

And here is my .blend file along with Doom3 MD5 exporting script and exported results (I didn't write that script, but it might be useful):
http://www.kot-in-action.com/files/blademaster.zip

EDIT: It would be wonderful if we could have multiple meshes exported at once (we have to have different meshes with single armature).

We appreciate your time, thank you!
And we will credit you in our game!

[Dragonlord]

I took a look at your .blend file. First thing I noticed two major problems.

1) Your Mesh and Armature are not located at the same place. The script requires that both objects have the same position or else you try to compare pears with apples.

2) Your Armature does have a rotation. The script requires the Mesh and especially the Armature to have no rotation. The reason is that with a rotation applied it is next to impossible to get a correct animation export.

My script is sensitive to the layout of objects since it is a very delicate thing ( and nearly impossible to get correct ) to transform stuff around between different coordinate systems.

EDIT:
I tried to export your model using my engine model/animation format to check out what could be a problem. This is though not possible since Blender doesn't like your setup one inch:

guessing 'blender' == '/usr/bin/blender'
Compiled with Python version 2.4.4.
Checking for installed Python... got it!
Cycle in foot.L to foot_rotations.L
Cycle in toes.L to toes_rotations.L
Cycle in foot.R to foot_rotations.R
Cycle in toes.R to toes_rotations.R
Cycle in foot.L to foot_rotations.L
Cycle in toes.L to toes_rotations.L
Cycle in foot.R to foot_rotations.R
Cycle in toes.R to toes_rotations.R
Cycle in foot.L to foot_rotations.L
Cycle in toes.L to toes_rotations.L
Cycle in foot.R to foot_rotations.R
Cycle in toes.R to toes_rotations.R
Cycle in foot.L to foot_rotations.L
Cycle in toes.L to toes_rotations.L
Cycle in foot.R to foot_rotations.R
Cycle in toes.R to toes_rotations.R
Cycle in foot.L to foot_rotations.L
Cycle in toes.L to toes_rotations.L
Cycle in foot.R to foot_rotations.R
Cycle in toes.R to toes_rotations.R
Cycle in foot.L to foot_rotations.L
Cycle in toes.L to toes_rotations.L
Cycle in foot.R to foot_rotations.R
Cycle in toes.R to toes_rotations.R
Cycle in foot.L to foot_rotations.L
Cycle in toes.L to toes_rotations.L
Cycle in foot.R to foot_rotations.R
Cycle in toes.R to toes_rotations.R
Cycle in foot.L to foot_rotations.L
Cycle in toes.L to toes_rotations.L
Cycle in foot.R to foot_rotations.R
Cycle in toes.R to toes_rotations.R
Cycle in foot.L to foot_rotations.L
Cycle in toes.L to toes_rotations.L
Cycle in foot.R to foot_rotations.R
Cycle in toes.R to toes_rotations.R
Cycle in foot.L to foot_rotations.L
Cycle in toes.L to toes_rotations.L
Cycle in foot.R to foot_rotations.R
Cycle in toes.R to toes_rotations.R
Cycle in foot.L to foot_rotations.L
Cycle in toes.L to toes_rotations.L
Cycle in foot.R to foot_rotations.R
Cycle in toes.R to toes_rotations.R
Memoryblock free: attempt to free NULL pointer
Memoryblock free: attempt to free NULL pointer
Memoryblock free: attempt to free NULL pointer

I don't know what you did with your Armature but kinematic cycles won't work with nearly no sane export script. Chances are this breaks the export. Please try to fix up your skeleton and try again ( as well as correcting the above mentioned troubles with your layout ).

EDIT: EDIT:
Took a look at the rig with the outliner. Have you ever happened to press the hide key while selecting a bone? It looks like the cycle causing bones are hidden and inaccessible ( since they do not show up ). Chances are it would be better to trash the existing Armature object and recreating it to get rid of all garbage that piled up ( you use Blender HEAD version... don't be surprised if garbage data starts to pile up in your .blend file )

[motorsep]

Thank you for the quick reply.

> Took a look at the rig with the outliner. Have you ever happened to press > the hide key while selecting a bone?

I might have I know I did it once, but I did Undo, so I shouldn't have any hidden bones.
I am gonna redo my rig, but I have some questions.
Can I use IK and constraints? Can I use custom shape bones?
Can I have certain bones in certain layers (for sake of better organization)?
Any advice on workflow for flawless export?

Thank you!

P.S. Any chance of getting multiple meshes exported at once (something like that setup you saw in my .blend file)?

[Dragonlord]

Can I use IK and constraints?

I have to check out the script if my engine code dribbled over. With the code I use in my engine export scripts all sorts of constraints are supported but I'm not sure about the SMD exporter one. I'll look into it.

Can I use custom shape bones?

No problem, that's just a visual thing in Blender.

Can I have certain bones in certain layers (for sake of better organization)?

Also no problem as this is only view based stuff.

Any advice on workflow for flawless export?

Not much except:
- Never have rotation on Mesh or Armature ( belief me, it's gonna hurt you sooner or later badly )
- Have only one root bone ( a bone with no parent ). Some engines ( Source, but not mine ... no idea about Darkplace though ) get you into troubles otherwise.
- Start animations always at frame 1 ( exporter for SMD expects this to be the case ).
- Use Cyclic Interpolation for all bones in an animation. This way looping animations are way easier to do in Blender.

I guess there are more but I can't remember them out of my head. I'm so used to them that they I just use them without thinking about them

P.S. Any chance of getting multiple meshes exported at once (something like that setup you saw in my .blend file)?

Not in my SMD exporter. Makes a lot of work and you really need this feature next to never.

[badzy]

hello

[Dragonlord]

Welcome to the forum badzy.