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by Redacted · in Artist Corner · 02/20/2006 (3:49 am) · 106 replies
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#3
Any expectation that multi-segmented bones will be supported at some point ?
I realize torque doesn't support them and it doesn't appear to me that the API supports access to them yet. I just wanted to put a bug in your ear about this since you're messing around with the animation code.
02/20/2006 (6:15 am)
Very nice Joseph. I'll have to play with this some since IK is about all I use and its been at minimum a meticulous task and/or pain to get good results this way so far.Any expectation that multi-segmented bones will be supported at some point ?
I realize torque doesn't support them and it doesn't appear to me that the API supports access to them yet. I just wanted to put a bug in your ear about this since you're messing around with the animation code.
#5
I'd expect that if this was going to happen, you'd require access from the API for each segment of the bone and would have to convert that to separate torque nodes/bones. Also, I'd assume you'd need to take into account the weighting of the separate segments for deformation somehow. Much of this function could potentially be copied from the blender C code I suppose, but in any event I don't expect this is a trivial feature to support.
Maybe we'll all get lucky and when the python API supports this, that support will be pretty complete and this won't be that much work, :-).
02/20/2006 (7:02 am)
Like I said, just putting a bug in your ear for consideration.I'd expect that if this was going to happen, you'd require access from the API for each segment of the bone and would have to convert that to separate torque nodes/bones. Also, I'd assume you'd need to take into account the weighting of the separate segments for deformation somehow. Much of this function could potentially be copied from the blender C code I suppose, but in any event I don't expect this is a trivial feature to support.
Maybe we'll all get lucky and when the python API supports this, that support will be pretty complete and this won't be that much work, :-).
#6
This resource is awesome. being able to use torque with blender has made my life so much happier.
02/20/2006 (10:41 am)
It would be very helpful if you bundled an example blend with the latest release so there is a good starting point. perhaps an example player with an IK chain.This resource is awesome. being able to use torque with blender has made my life so much happier.
#7
Running dos2unix on the file under linux fixes the problem, but it'd be a nice source of user frustration to eliminate from the distribution. At minimal it maybe should be covered in the readme.
02/20/2006 (12:26 pm)
One minor problem I found is that the Install Scripts.sh file is a DOS/windoze file, i.e. the end of lines are CR/NLs. Out of the box, running that script to install gives strange errors, like:: command not found line 2: 'nstall Scripts.sh: line 10: syntax error near unexpected token ' 'nstall Scripts.sh: line 10: ' if ( mkdir ~/.blender/scripts )
Running dos2unix on the file under linux fixes the problem, but it'd be a nice source of user frustration to eliminate from the distribution. At minimal it maybe should be covered in the readme.
#8
Are there any expected limitations for the IK support ?
I am using everything, more or less, on my render animation armature. It has many different types of constraints, including many action constraints to drive some stuff, along with the normal copy rotation, location, etc. It also has way too many bones, 200+, for a game and many of those are only associated with constraints, so I've turned them off for export.
Most of the actions I'd normally been baking to get them into game, caused exceptions like:
I just kept deleting them until I finally got an export to work. All of the sequences in -show under torque though were just completely warping my model.
I know this isn't enough information for you to really take action on, I'll be looking into the problems further. Most likely this means I'll be playing around with my game models which have simpler skeletons and actions/constraints associated with them.
02/20/2006 (1:37 pm)
No joy at all for me on IK based animations, not with one of my render animation models at least. I haven't tried my much simpler game models to see if they work.Are there any expected limitations for the IK support ?
I am using everything, more or less, on my render animation armature. It has many different types of constraints, including many action constraints to drive some stuff, along with the normal copy rotation, location, etc. It also has way too many bones, 200+, for a game and many of those are only associated with constraints, so I've turned them off for export.
Most of the actions I'd normally been baking to get them into game, caused exceptions like:
Error: Exception encountered, bailing out. exceptions.Exception Dumping output to consolewhen I tried to export them without baking.
I just kept deleting them until I finally got an export to work. All of the sequences in -show under torque though were just completely warping my model.
I know this isn't enough information for you to really take action on, I'll be looking into the problems further. Most likely this means I'll be playing around with my game models which have simpler skeletons and actions/constraints associated with them.
#9
I'd be happy to host the files on my server.
02/20/2006 (3:06 pm)
Does anybody have a vehicle or player example blend files? The example.blend that comes with the exporter only seems to have collision, los, and details.I'd be happy to host the files on my server.
#11
No influence keys set and I did have a 3d window active.
I did try it with one of my game models and am seeing better results. I'll play around with that one more and see if I run into problems or not, its much simpler. Actually, I think the only issue I'm seeing on my game models is related to scaling that somehow made it into the blend file. I think once I've scaled my IPOs to match the scaling I had do to on my mesh and armature, things will be working peachy for these ... Now if I can just figure out why my game models got scaled by a factor of 100 ???? :-/
Also, I will look into what's really happening with my render animation model, at least isolate it to a smaller set of issues. It really is complex in the number of bones, their relationships and the constraints as I've attmpted to highly automate a lot of the stuff I wanted to do for rendering animations. Way overkill for a game. I'd rather see you working on other aspects of the exporter than to spend time on making this particular model export. I really only tried it to see how complete the new animation export capability was.
If I can isolate some of the problems its having, I'll make up a blend that gives you a good concise example of the problem. If I can't then we can decide at that point how important it is to deal with these issues. I think I'll try adding some features to one of my game armatures and see if I can isolate the issue that way.
02/20/2006 (7:02 pm)
@Joseph:No influence keys set and I did have a 3d window active.
I did try it with one of my game models and am seeing better results. I'll play around with that one more and see if I run into problems or not, its much simpler. Actually, I think the only issue I'm seeing on my game models is related to scaling that somehow made it into the blend file. I think once I've scaled my IPOs to match the scaling I had do to on my mesh and armature, things will be working peachy for these ... Now if I can just figure out why my game models got scaled by a factor of 100 ???? :-/
Also, I will look into what's really happening with my render animation model, at least isolate it to a smaller set of issues. It really is complex in the number of bones, their relationships and the constraints as I've attmpted to highly automate a lot of the stuff I wanted to do for rendering animations. Way overkill for a game. I'd rather see you working on other aspects of the exporter than to spend time on making this particular model export. I really only tried it to see how complete the new animation export capability was.
If I can isolate some of the problems its having, I'll make up a blend that gives you a good concise example of the problem. If I can't then we can decide at that point how important it is to deal with these issues. I think I'll try adding some features to one of my game armatures and see if I can isolate the issue that way.
#13
Anyone need a 600 foot tall penguin ? ;-)
02/20/2006 (9:02 pm)
Sorry, I should have been clearer, just in blender.Anyone need a 600 foot tall penguin ? ;-)
#17
I grabbed 0.91RC2 and played with it a bit. I'm not seeing the crashes, i.e. the exceptions, I was seeing with the RC1 release. The animations on my complex model aren't exporting properly though.
The linux installer script worked fine for me straight out of the zip file.
A couple of things I noticed. The version number in the interface says 0.9. This forces me to have to double check to make sure I'm running the right version of the exporter. It would be good if the version number in the interface said 0.91RC2, or whatever the current version is. Also, I tend to put version numbers in the menu entries on the stuff I write ... if it deserves version numbering. If the version number is in the UI, this isn't such a big deal to me. I just think the version of the exporter should be readily apparent to the user one way or another.
Having lots of bones makes the armature tab hard to use. The bones are squeezed so much that you I can only see a few characters of the bone name in the button. Stretching this panel horizontally to 900 pixels wide works for me, although it definitely isn't a complete solution.
What would be nice here would be for this panel to have a reasonable fixed number of bones horizontally and scroll vertically to make it easier to see all the bones. Also, sorting the bone names alphabetically would be a great help in find bones. If these changes are a lot of work, its not a big deal. With my game models, this panel works ok, although sorting would be good in this case too. Where this really becomes an issue is with my non-game models, but like I've said, they have more bones than is reasonable in most cases to use in a game engine.
BTW, is there a limit to the number of bones the exporter or torque supports ? Maybe I'm running over that limit.
I should have time to play with this later today and hopefully can isolate where some of the problems are. I'd be happy to do some IK animations for an example model and have always had this in the back of my mind to do. My schedule is pretty tight for the next week or so though, so I couldn't guarantee when I might be able to do this.
02/22/2006 (7:35 am)
Sorry for the late response. I've been kindof busy the last few days trying to get some software off my plate and into testing.I grabbed 0.91RC2 and played with it a bit. I'm not seeing the crashes, i.e. the exceptions, I was seeing with the RC1 release. The animations on my complex model aren't exporting properly though.
The linux installer script worked fine for me straight out of the zip file.
A couple of things I noticed. The version number in the interface says 0.9. This forces me to have to double check to make sure I'm running the right version of the exporter. It would be good if the version number in the interface said 0.91RC2, or whatever the current version is. Also, I tend to put version numbers in the menu entries on the stuff I write ... if it deserves version numbering. If the version number is in the UI, this isn't such a big deal to me. I just think the version of the exporter should be readily apparent to the user one way or another.
Having lots of bones makes the armature tab hard to use. The bones are squeezed so much that you I can only see a few characters of the bone name in the button. Stretching this panel horizontally to 900 pixels wide works for me, although it definitely isn't a complete solution.
What would be nice here would be for this panel to have a reasonable fixed number of bones horizontally and scroll vertically to make it easier to see all the bones. Also, sorting the bone names alphabetically would be a great help in find bones. If these changes are a lot of work, its not a big deal. With my game models, this panel works ok, although sorting would be good in this case too. Where this really becomes an issue is with my non-game models, but like I've said, they have more bones than is reasonable in most cases to use in a game engine.
BTW, is there a limit to the number of bones the exporter or torque supports ? Maybe I'm running over that limit.
I should have time to play with this later today and hopefully can isolate where some of the problems are. I'd be happy to do some IK animations for an example model and have always had this in the back of my mind to do. My schedule is pretty tight for the next week or so though, so I couldn't guarantee when I might be able to do this.
#19
In Dts_Blender.py, around line 1750, I changed 'control.width = 300' to 'control.width = 900' and they fit pretty well, but this obviously is a complete hack, :-). There are some X and Y values there, but I didn't mess with them, so I'm not sure what they actually control. The more permenent solution I had in mind to look at doing follows.
The sequences/actions are displayed in a scrolling panel. That's pretty nice. I was hoping maybe the panel with the bones in it could get changed to use that scrolling panel also. If we don't foresee doing anything but toggling the export of the bones, you should be able to get somewhere between 2 and 5 bones horizontally per line (given the limited number of chars in a blender name). If other attributes might be exposed per bone, something more similar to the sequence/action panel could be used, i.e. one bone per line with its attributes.
Sorting of both the bones and actions/sequences would be good too as it makes it much easier to find what you're looking for. Neither the actions/sequences nor the bones are sorted when I run the exporter on my computer.
Oh, one more thing as long as I'm writing this message, the gradient background to the sequence/action name makes it harder to read than if there was a solid color there, at least with the black text over a white to black gradient. A different set of colors providing more contrast to the black text or a solid color doing the same would be better in my opinion. This might be controlled by the fade_mode attribute on the BasicContainer in Common_Gui.py.
02/22/2006 (9:22 am)
As far as I can tell, all of my bones are being displayed on that panel, they're just getting squeezed into a limited amount of screen space.In Dts_Blender.py, around line 1750, I changed 'control.width = 300' to 'control.width = 900' and they fit pretty well, but this obviously is a complete hack, :-). There are some X and Y values there, but I didn't mess with them, so I'm not sure what they actually control. The more permenent solution I had in mind to look at doing follows.
The sequences/actions are displayed in a scrolling panel. That's pretty nice. I was hoping maybe the panel with the bones in it could get changed to use that scrolling panel also. If we don't foresee doing anything but toggling the export of the bones, you should be able to get somewhere between 2 and 5 bones horizontally per line (given the limited number of chars in a blender name). If other attributes might be exposed per bone, something more similar to the sequence/action panel could be used, i.e. one bone per line with its attributes.
Sorting of both the bones and actions/sequences would be good too as it makes it much easier to find what you're looking for. Neither the actions/sequences nor the bones are sorted when I run the exporter on my computer.
Oh, one more thing as long as I'm writing this message, the gradient background to the sequence/action name makes it harder to read than if there was a solid color there, at least with the black text over a white to black gradient. A different set of colors providing more contrast to the black text or a solid color doing the same would be better in my opinion. This might be controlled by the fade_mode attribute on the BasicContainer in Common_Gui.py.
#20
Thanks for the work you're putting into this, I hope I can contribute more than feedback in the more nearer, than later, future.
02/22/2006 (9:24 am)
Oh, you're welcome. Feedback is easy, ;-).Thanks for the work you're putting into this, I hope I can contribute more than feedback in the more nearer, than later, future.
Torque Owner Gustavo Munoz
Thank you SO much, Joseph, this is a giant step for Blender/TGE heads. Please, keep up your wonderfull work.
Fingers crosed about including tristrips in next versions ... ;)