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Character export

by Jeff Murray · in Artist Corner · 07/28/2006 (1:43 pm) · 7 replies

Hello 3d people,

We have a problem exporting a character out of Maya... well, it exports ... but it seems to ignore the .cfg file when we try to 'disable' exporting all the top half of the character.

Thing is, we only just discovered today that making the character look up and down is done by animation. We already had a bunch of nice animations ready before (jumping, running, dying etc.) and now I guess we need to re-export them without the top half nodes so that the look up/down animation isn't affected by them.

I'm kind of frustrated with the character stuff now, as this seems to have stopped us dead in our tracks.

We put the .cfg file in the same folder:

AlwaysExport:
mount0
cam

NeverExport:
L_chest
R_chest
spine1

-Param::CollapseTransforms

Yet L_chest,R_chest and spine1 ... along with all their children ... get exported every time :(

There is only one .cfg file in the folder (named male.cfg after the character, male.dts) and we even tried opening the file itself instead of opening maya after reading on the forums that the project path sometimes gets messed up...

Anyone got any clues? Can you save my project? ;)

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me,
Jeff.
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Torque Owner Dave MacIsaac
#1
07/28/2006 (2:19 pm)
Not sure i know whats wrong you say your model exports BUT! don't export ? what.... some or none of your animations how do you have your animations sets and sequence nodes setup.

Torque Owner Jeff Murray
Default Studio Name
#2
07/28/2006 (2:37 pm)
They export fine ... but the .cfg file is ignored, so it exports everything including the nodes in the top half of the player - those I specify not to, in the .cfg file :(

I want to be able to export JUST the animations on nodes below the waist, since the look animation is getting messed up by our previously produced run, jump etc. animations.

Sorry if that was confusing!!

Torque Owner Dave MacIsaac
#3
07/28/2006 (2:57 pm)
Whats in your dump file.

Torque Owner Jeff Murray
Default Studio Name
#4
07/31/2006 (7:07 am)
The only notable thing is ...

Setting up for sequence export only (dsq) -- turning off optimized meshes
Config file "D:/Calin/test_export/male_look.cfg" not found.

Config file "D:/Calin/test_export/male_look.cfg" not found.

Config file "D:/Calin/test_export/dtsScene.cfg" not found.
First pass: enumerate scene...

Which makes sense, as we only have a cfg file for the male.dts (male.cfg) ... the look animation, I guess, should have all nodes as it's a blend?

We actually tried to put ALL of the nodes we don't want into the cfg file instead of just those parent nodes ... so it looks like:

AlwaysExport:
mount0
cam

NeverExport:
spine1
spine2
spine3
neck
head
head2
head_orientConstraint1
back_hair
back_hair_orientConstraint1
top_hair
top_hair_orientConstraint1
neck_orientConstraint1
R_chest
R_clav
R_shoulder
R_shoulder2
R_elbow1
R_elbow2
R_forearm
R_wrist
R_palm
R_pinky_knuckle
R_pinky1
R_pinky2
R_pinky3
R_ring_knuckle
R_ring1
R_ring2
R_ring3
R_mid_knuckle
R_mid1
R_mid2
R_mid3
R_index_knuckle
R_index1
R_index2
R_index3
R_thumb_knuckle
R_thumb1
R_thumb2
R_thumb3
mount0
R_wrist_orientConstraint1
effector13
L_chest
L_clav
L_shoulder
L_shoulder2
L_elbow1
L_elbow2
L_forearm
L_wrist
L_palm
L_pinky_knuckle
L_pinky1
L_pinky2
L_pinky3
L_ring_knuckle
L_ring1
L_ring2
L_ring3
L_mid_knuckle
L_mid1
L_mid2
L_mid3
L_index_knuckle
L_index1
L_index2
L_index3
L_thumb_knuckle
L_thumb1
L_thumb2
L_thumb3
L_wrist_orientConstraint1
effector14

-Param::CollapseTransforms

Thanks for your time :)

Torque Owner Dave MacIsaac
#5
07/31/2006 (8:39 am)
Its looking for a "male_look.cfg" cfg file in the models export folder if it cant find that it looks for a the default
one "dtsScene.cfg" to work around this just make the "dtsScene.cfg" with this info and it should export.
Plus not sure but the Constraints and effectors are part of your rig and not bones that stuff should be under NeverExport or left out of the file its self and the exporter will remove them.

Torque Owner Jeff Murray
Default Studio Name
#6
08/01/2006 (9:39 am)
Hi Dave .. thanks for the help - I think that must have been it because once I directed my 3d guy to your post, it got sorted!

MUCH APPRECIATED! :D

Torque Owner Dave MacIsaac
#7
08/01/2006 (10:14 am)
No prob :)