Vertex animation.... any ideas (3dsMax)

[Warfreak]

I KNOW i found something of the sorts on FishdotXSI before, i jsut never tested it....

So, in hopes that we may still have a chance at "organic" animation, does anyone either have a good idea of how to do it (and get it to export) or know where a copy of that page from the FishdotXSI website may be lurking.

Thanks a bunch. 

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Don't know about max, but blender and gsl both appear to support vertex animation. Other then that don't really have a clue how it works. You might try a web search for max tutorials as I understand some peeps have done some awesome stuff using python and maxscripts to work around things.

[bigbadbogie]

vertex anims are actaully quite easy in max - the only problem is that they wont export with the xsi exporter

the scion ships were made in softimageXSI and use a special type of vertex animation unique to that program - basically, unless somebody makes a new exporter that exports softimage style vertex anims from max, we are screwed

[OvermindDL1]

Supposedly B3D should, just needs to be tested and cleaned up so it works correctly.
Generated by OvermindDL1's Signature Auto-Add Script via GreaseMonkey

[bigbadbogie]

you are the resident programmer... any chance of a max vertex anim exporter OM??

[Nielk1]

If he can get the source for the current one.

[Avatar]

As stated in other threads along these lines, according to dx the Pandemic exporter for Max 3 DOES export vertex animations when done with the proper controller.

I haven't tested this, so feel free to do so...

-Av-

[Warfreak]

Well, Heaven forbid that we will ahve to reset the defaults of 3ds Max 6 and over liek last time.......

I know I found somewhere the exact controls to experiment with, Xform i think it was, something liek that.....

[Avatar]

I'm certain Linked XForm doesn't make it through the Pandemic exporter...  I'd have some beautifully animated walkers if it did...

Apparently you have to assign a controller to sets of verticies, animate them, and it'll make it through...

or something like that... 


-Av-

[Nielk1]

I changed by default controller to TCB for normal movements, is that the one we can use for vertex ones?

[bigbadbogie]

nope

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Are vertex animations handled the same way by the KFE? Also, is scaling a vertex function? Just wanted to know as gsl works with vertex animation as I've seen in the output files of the x exporter it uses.

The KFE it supports has quite a few options for recording stuff like texture, bump, color, surface, invisible, etc. I disabled most of them, but do currently use kinematics, move, and rotate enabled. Scale, was disabled as someone said that bz2 doesn't handle this option.

Also, noticed that studying the files in a text editor is helping me to understand animation entries a bit more. Copy and paste operations are proving very useful for moving things around in a model file. For example, copying the animation section from an x2xsi file to the threed version will allow an animation to occur. Still trying to do the same thing only in this copy operation i'm atempting to get the texture section from the threed version into the x2xsi version as it won't show any texture.

[Nielk1]

The only way to scale in BZ2 is with vertex animation.

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Now i'm really confused...does that mean that i should enable the vertex option? I think MTS said something to the effect that the scaling entry in one of my xsi text files had no meaning to the bz2 engine. N1, could you elaborate a bit more more about what you mean as far as vertex animation is the only way bz2 using scaling? Tanks, BNG.

[Nielk1]

Scale type animations are not used by the Battlezone 2 engine.
Two simulate a scale animation, you must take each vertex of the object and move it away from the center. The issue with scale animations is, if BZ2 did use them, should it also scale child meshes? should it scale from center or from origin? It was a lot simpler to just rely on vertex animations since they had them.