Animation question about 3DEX 1.5.5 XSI format verses X2XSI XSI format.

[General BlackDragon]

what does a vertex animation look like in notepad?

[TheJamsh]

can i just voice something that zero angel said to me. DONT use notepad when editing XSI's or MSH files. i now use a program he recommended called arachnophilia. its VERY good, and unlike notepad, CAN edit MSH files without breaking the binary data as ZA put it

http://www.webmasterfree.com/Arachnophilia_d7554.html

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Tanks guys, I was looking at a massive XSI file for a walker type in the data pack and copied the AnimationSet and SI_AnimationKey sections minus the ton of XYZ numbers that were to the left and below them to make viewing the entries easier onscreen; I got tired of scrolling up and down forever to compare stuff due to the size of the file.

Now comes the scare part of looking at the structure of a model file, and the associated ODF file. I'll take your suggestions into account and begin experimenting with making file changes in some systematic way to see if anything produces an actual animation.

I'm also going to look in the data pack for some of the simpler animated files. I remember one or two like a waving flag, and a rotating platform. Question: does SI_Envelope refer to a vertex type animation? Tanks BNG.

PS: Dl'ing it now JAM.  

[mrtwosheds]

does SI_Envelope refer to a vertex type animation? Tanks BNG.

It is used in models that are vertex animated.
so is          SI_FrameBasePoseMatrix {

Basically a selection of the models vertex's are grouped with a bone (just another numerical point) this is then animated with a normal animation causing just one part of a mesh to move.
The only thing stopping me constructing vertex animation in notepad is being unable to identify individual vertex. A program that does vertex animation would make this visible.

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

How can arachnophilia open files that are not listed in the open file dialog; I don't see a listing for either msh or xsi. Help me to understand again how it's of any use for BZII? Tanks BNG.

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Tanks MTS, stranglely enough I'm currently searching for 3d program with vertex animation features, but the search goes on. It'd be nice to find one as the Scion units mainly appear to be constructed in this way. At this point, I'd just be happy to figure out how to do regular animations, but we can always hope right? BNG.

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

In the sample section below I notice spaces after the commas...is this important to include in the XSI file structure? I'm asking for clarification as X2XSI does not write out these spaces in it's version, neither does the 3DEX 1.5.5 version; the section below was copied out of an XSI from the data pack files.

(RTMS: BNG modify cube version to see if it makes any difference and make notation.) 

1; 4; 1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000;;,
         8; 4; 0.758758, 0.000000, -0.651373, 0.000000;;,
         9; 4; 0.688967, -0.000000, -0.724793, -0.000000;;,
         24; 4; -0.688967, -0.000000, -0.724793, -0.000000;;,
         25; 4; 0.758758, 0.000000, 0.651373, 0.000000;;,
         31; 4; 0.994869, 0.000000, 0.101169, 0.000000;;;

[OvermindDL1]

B3D supports vertex animations just fine, and as usual, the more testing that people do with the animations, the faster I can get the exporter to export it, cannot really do anything without reports coming in.

And no, the spaces are not relevent, almost none of the whitespace is needed, heck you could put the xsi all on to a single line if you wanted.
Generated by OvermindDL1's Signature Auto-Add Script via GreaseMonkey

[bigbadbogie]

does 3dsmax support vertex animation??

[TheJamsh]

@ BNG, get it to open All Files.

or use Open With... then find the arachnopilia.exe on youre system (itll be where ever you installed it too of course)

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Tanks TJ. In regards to the AnimationSet section that I noted earlier I noticed that the x2xsi xsi version does not write out the SI_ prefix where it needs to be when it translates the x file to xsi. In WinMerge, which I used for comparison.

After I manually changed,  AnimationKey { to SI_AnimationKey {  the animation began to play in 3DEX. There are also several other animation entries which need to be changed as well under the animation section. Apparently, the SI_ thingy does make a difference and if not present should be manually entered into the file.

Maybe the BZII engine needs to see this information to further process the file; I don't know for sure, but it seems to make a world of difference guys.

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

MeshVertexColors, is written out by x2xsi from the x file (which does have it) but I don't notice it in any of the xsi files from the data pack. Can I safely delete this section from the resulting xsi file produced by x2xsi?

Update: I tried deleting this section and lost the animation controls in 3DEX; undoing the deletion brought them back again.

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

This is totally strange, but x2xsi handles the animation section quite nicely with the addition of the SI_ entries in the animationset section, but does poorly with handling the texture information; nothing shows up.

Bz2me, on the other hand does great with the texture section, but fails miserably in the animation section.

Now I'm wondering if a possible compromise solution might result by using WinMerge with both versions loaded side by side to exchange data sections between each other to produce a textured, and animated file. I'm going to try it out by using both apps to make an xsi file with bz2me, and one with x2xsi and load them both in winmerge and try some simple left to right data section swapping/merging to see what results from the data swaps. BNG, scratches his head and hopes to hell he don't get totally confused in the process....

[mrtwosheds]

MeshVertexColors, is written out by x2xsi from the x file (which does have it) but I don't notice it in any of the xsi files from the data pack. Can I safely delete this section from the resulting xsi file produced by x2xsi?

My process results in an xsi without the MeshVertexColors, entry, if I wish part of the model to use vertex colouring I have to add MeshVertexColors manually.
If you lost the animation after deleting it, it is probably due to having an incorrect number/placement of {}.
{
{I think of {} as open and close.}
{so you must get them right, to create hierarchy
{Or the information is curtailed}
}
}

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Cool, I got the bz2me version to animate by copying the animation section from the x2xsi version. Now I guess I'll try copying the bz2me texture section to the x2xsi version to see if I can get the texture I applied to appear as it currently displays as a plain grey cube.

Editing the files in winmerge is proving to be quite a useful exercise as I never imagined much of anything would ever happen except for things to just crash 3dex. Maybe there's hope yet in just trying something to see what happens either way right?

Still got a lot of work to do least of which is actually understanding what the heck I'm doing....

Update, the texture section looks a bit more complicated as the bz2me version does not have the  MeshVertexColors section like the x2xsi version does. Geeze! I hope I don't get totally lost switching stuff back and forth.