This is a neat little trick for taking primitive object shapes like spheres and making custom looking shapes by adding the object into the workspace and right clicking it's icon to bring up a 2nd menu box where the latitude and longitude settings can be adjusted up or down to either make more faces or less faces to make the sphere look more like a diamond shaped object.
As far as I've been able to figure out most of the icons support a 2nd settings panel that pops up when right clicking icons for making customized adjustments. The same holds true when right clicking an object in the workspace to bring up a 2nd editing menu where stuff like editing faces and other neat stuff is possible. Total noob modelers should start out using something like GSL due to it's simple no brainer UI designed for non pro modeling idiots like myself. Seems like the more I play around with it the more fun I have making stuff with it. Who knows, maybe some day I'll finally figure out how to animate models too?
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You can animate in gsl and export as .x right?
But your patently constructed .x models, don't function in bz2...
Do the .x files contain the animation data when you read them in notepad? Can you read them in notepad?
If the answer to these questions is yes, then it is just a matter of reassembling the data into a functioning .xsi
I have perfected a process to do this, but I have no way yet to make animations other than by, typing out the data myself/view in 3dex/repeat process...
Its not an ideal process, but once you get the hang of it, reconstructing the models is not so difficult, indeed allot of time may be saved by not bothering to construct them properly in the modeling program in the first place, just make each component as you want it to be and put some thought into important stuff like UV mapping and pivot points.
Im building another walker type now, legs and body are 2 different models until I put them together in the final .xsi
I'm guessing the big problem is that the X format that GSL saves in must not be the X format supported by the BZII engine after all. As I pointed to in another topic 3DEX 1.5.5 does translate XSI animations properly, but again only exports the first 8 frames of say an X file with 8 or more frames. Also, I have a limited knowledge and a relatively short attention span on testing things more fully.
I was thinking though that your notepad editing concept is a quite interesting idea. I guess that as mentioned the cut and paste method is somewhat simplified by letting the modeling program generate the raw data and then copying it into the correct positions of a properly formated XSI template.
I have a habit of loading both X and XSI files into notepad so that I can do visual file compares between both formats and comparisons between true XSI files and the variations created by apps like BZ2ME, X2XSI, 3DEX, etc. Mostly what I see is that they are all different; which appears to be why the variations can not actually animate anything.
For example, I created an untextured cube in Blender 3D and opened the file in notepad because neither 3DEX or BZ2ME could actually open B3D XSI version. I discovered part of the reason was a missing statement in the header that should include the entry 0032; apparently this has something to do with something referring to the float size parameter in bits. Don't really know what that means, but when I added the entry manually in notepad the file partially loaded into 3DEX minus the actual cube. It did show the lighting portions as arrow pointers all of which was on a blue background. I also noticed that the XSI layout lacked spacing between elements listed in the file.
I guess my point is that no one has been able to replicate the true BZII XSI format the way BZII needs to see it. What's even stranger is that the currently supported XSI format is not backward compatible with the older version that we need to make animated models either. So really short of dropping a wad to buy SI3D or MAX your notepad method appears to be the only working solution to date. Kudos, MTS are da man. BNG
That 0032 part is not used by BZ2, so I did not include it, I was trying to keep everything simple.
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I made that cyber-spider thing with only 8 keyframes in each animation, there are lots of animations, 6 legs and a tail all have 3 segments,
2 mandables and one to position the body correctly. 24, 8 kframe animations for each movement, walk, run etc.
8 keyframes is plenty if you use them right.
Didn't you say there were problems with 8 frames animating too fast?
No, I said you can adjust the speed of an animation by altering the line numbers values.
Kudos MTS, maybe the 1.5.5 3DEX XSI exporter could prove somewhat useful afterall? At least in regards to learning the basics of doing simple animations from various 3D formats that 3DEX supports; there are quite a few of them listed. As I see it an ideal setup would be to find a common format like X, 3DS, ASC, MAX, COB, etc and do the animations in the modeling program itself. Doing simple animated props like waving flags, swaying trees, and other animated efects might at least hold some promise.