Game Development Community

No synchronicity between mesh and animation

by Russell Fincher · in Artist Corner · 03/07/2006 (3:27 pm) · 10 replies

So I believe I've created a working DSQ file, and I think I exported my DTS mesh correctly, but now I get them both into ShowTool, and the animation moves but the mesh is still. Seems to be a disconnect between the two:

www.sickheadgames.com/stuff/garagegamesimages/async_anim.jpg
Anyone see a problem in the arrangement of the nodes in these schematics?:

Schematic of Mesh DTS
Schematic of Animation DSQ

-russell


btw, I get no helpful errors in the console... ShowTool finally seems to be finding everything it's looking for. I do get a couple of messages stating: "DEObject::getThreadsequence: index out of range".

About the author

Art Lead at Sickhead Games, focused on dev tools and prototyping, instructor/advisor at several Dallas colleges and universities, Associate Developer with GarageGames, champion of avant-garde game art at uncommonassembly.com.


#1
03/08/2006 (6:27 am)
How have you bound the mesh to the skeleton? You need to have a completely unlinked mesh with the skin modifier hooked up to your bones. Looks like you've done something wrong with the dts schematic, go read the documentation.
#2
03/08/2006 (7:35 am)
Hm, the mesh was bound to the skeleton with a skin modifier. Was I wrong to collapse the stack... does this negate the skin modifier?
#3
03/08/2006 (7:36 am)
Yep. Collapsing the skin modifier will remove the weight data.
#4
03/08/2006 (8:23 am)
Any attempt to unlink the mesh doesn't seem to include the mesh in the DTS:

www.sickheadgames.com/stuff/garagegamesimages/unlinked_showtool.jpg
Schematic of DTS, mesh unlinked

Also, this time I didn't collapse the stack, leaving the skin modifier there during export.
#5
03/08/2006 (8:28 am)
First of all, don't call your mesh Bip01. Rename it to something like mesh1.
It should work, but you might have something set up incorrectly with your detail markers. I can't say without looking at the actual file though.
#6
03/08/2006 (8:57 am)
Wow, changing the name to mesh1 somehow fixed the problem. I'm baffled. Thanks Magnus! :)
#7
03/08/2006 (9:20 am)
One final issue though... in my walking animation in Max, the character's head and shoulders bob up and down, as it would in real life. But in ShowTool, the character's body seems to be locked in place at the pelvis. So the torso, shoulders, and head do not move up and down, while the character's feet plunge below the "ground". I've tried various ways to link and unlink the detail brush, bounds box, and sequence dummy to the bones. How can I get the pelvis/shoulders/head to move vertically instead of the feet?
#8
03/08/2006 (9:33 am)
Again; It's difficult to say without seeing the files, but my guess would be the bounds move up/down with the pelvis. Select the bounds and remove the Z move inheritance and it should work.
#9
03/08/2006 (9:47 am)
I just realized I've got no extra nodes like ground, eye, or camera (may have the terminology wrong there). I haven't addressed those, nor am I that familiar with how to place those yet. Time to hit the docs again!
#10
03/08/2006 (10:36 am)
Just to answer my own question, in case someone needs it later... I failed to correctly constrain the way the bounding box was linked.