Milkshape3D DTS Exporter Update

#1 This sounds cool, but how would we assign them? Doesn't it overwrite any previous assignments when you assign a vertices's to a bone? Is this meant to be used with a plug-in? Thanks!

#2 Assigning bone influence/weights is done thru the 1.8+ UI, in the Joints Tab; I think there is a very meager tutorial at the Chum site. Sounds like it's the exporter that has been recompiled to support Milkshape's weights. I have never used this version, before....I did not know that Prairie Games had released a version to the General Public! Interesting...Thanks! I have always utilized Chris Robertson's DTSPlus! version; perhaps I'm a bit biased...I'm listed in the credits! LOL

...or you could use the SIMS2 plugin for assigning multiple influences, not as fancy as Mete's dialog, but it works. I actually weight in another program[or 2], that just happen to export to Ms3d with multiple influences....;).


Eeewwww....I gotta 'patch' my version of Milkshape3d to run this exporter?

#3 I am struggling right now to figure out whether the DTS+ exporter or ShowTool Pro is at fault, but when I export multiple assignment/weighted, animated models from MilkShape (with the old exproter or the DTS+ one) I get a seemingly perfect rendition of my mesh and animation, but with single weighted assignments.

<* Wes *>

Rex: The patch is a source code patch (for compiling the exporter yourself). The binary is in the package.

At any rate, the exporter they made works just fine, and I can see all the multiple weighted motions (some motions are animations of the fourth assignment, so it is easy to tell). A very nice piece of work, my compliments to the authors.

#4 @Wes: Do you use a .CFG file? to export[DTSPlus!]. I'm not sure, but there is a parameter in the .CFG file that specifies mulitple weights. It's in the block below[good area to adjust for weights and tolerances]:

=Params::SkinWeightThreshhold 0.0001
=Params::SameVertTOL 0.00005
=Params::SameTVertTOL 0.00005
=Params::weightsPerVertex 3

//notice the "3" instead of default "1"

#5 Oh! (Wes scrambles to find readme file).
Thanks for the pointer. I know I have a lot to learn, but I thought one of the big additions for DTSPlus was the extra vertex weights. Now I see why the wouldn't work.
But the PraireGames exporter does work, and it handles four assignment/three weight animations well.
Someone should pick that up and put it in the distribution package.
While I can't use them in anything due to copyright, I found that Sims 2 meshes and animations can be made to work very well in TGE. So I can focus first on learning to code this engine instead of making art assets.
<* Wes *>

#6 Eyah, I've not experienced any shifting of vertex data....in an export with DTSPlus!...would be nice to get the 4th assignment working...prolly moreso for your needs, Wes. I guess the DTSPlus! package should contain a .cfg file with the assignment in place for the any assignement beyond 1 influence....perhaps I'll take a look at this other exporter...do all DTS/DSQ features have support? IFL, Visibility, Blends; to me the Big 3...lol.

#7 It is merely an update of the DTS Exporter plugin that ships with TGE. They took that and modified it to access the extra 3 bone assignment and skin weights in a MilkShape model (post 1.7.7). Because I did not read the DTSPlus! documentation, I didn't have any clue to make a .cfg file.

There is one particular model I was using that has the portions of the female model's upper chest partly assigned to an unused bone as the fourth assignment, to which some movements were added to mimic inertia and gravity during a dance routine. It can be quite mesmerizing, depending on your view of the world, but I am wanting to explore ways to do this effect in a more dynamic fashion, a physics effect calculated rather than canned.

#8 Wow, Wes, good luck there....I've managed to get some 'canned' IK going in another program that I license and get it back into Ms3d and thus: Torque! Thanks for the write up of the newer exporter, too bad if the only update by Prairie Games to the stock SDK ms3d exporter is 4 vertex weights...never did like that stock exporter...no dsq support[thus blends], only 1 collision mesh, not sure if even LOScol is supported...no IFL, no Visibility.

#9 I have given this some additional thought, and I think that the best place to make this type of tool is not in the game engine, requiring runtime calculations, but as a step in the animation file creation or export process. My current thought is that the inertia component would be calculated from movements on a specific bone, and be applied to some specific bone. This would rely on the model being appropriately rigged, but is a step that could well be performed as a MilkShape plugin.

I need to give the design some more thought, but it seems like it should be workable. In my little world here, automation beats manual labor every time.

<* Wes *>

#10 Sounds like a nice, involved project, Wes, good luck on that! Let me know if you need anymore Ms3d[milkfarm] help...perhaps a fair exchange of talents...eh? If this were a plugin for MS3d, I'd love to know more about it or help it along...:). One of my main goals is to get the 'lowEnderz' as many wrenches as possible to use; proving that the expense and complexity of the tool is irrelevant.

Now... I also utilize/license. fragMOTION, a very robust lowcost animation program. It functions with LUA scripting and I've managed to cleanup some offsets in BVH files with scripting on an entire animation track! It also has a very good handshake with Milkshape3d, so it's wrench and twist in frag....export to MS3d and onto to TGE/dts/dsq....!

#11 I have fragmotion also. I can get models from The Sims 2 via MilkShape with animation into it and play them great, but the converse blows up in the game because the bone tree is ordered differently. It is a quirk of the game engine that in the animations bones are referenced by name, but the engine expects the bones in the mesh files to be in a particular index order. I worked on a post-process for it in MilkShape, but I can choose either to fix the mesh, or fix the animations, but the MilkShape SDK lacks an easy way to delete the frames from an animation. I write an animation exporter for Sims2 and fragmotion, but I have an unresolved issue where I get different values for the arms and legs than I get in the same animation in MilkShape. There is something odd there, and I have not determined the reason. Since the animations play perfectly, it is not clear to me why there would be a difference in the arms and legs, as compared to the trunk and head. The same algorithms seem to fail.

I am wanting most of all to make a simple model viewer in the Torque game engine. I don't want a lot of other functionality, because i want to add that one layer at a time, the way I want. I just want a script that will load a DTS model, play an animation and has a camera view that can be moved and rotated. I have been testing models with the ShowTool, but I really want something that is simpler. I can recompile the engine, and I have built such resources as the MiniApps, but I haven't finished reading enough to get to adding the calls I need into the scripts.

As far as low-enders, I have a few interesting plugins that were developed for Sims2 meshes, but could be made to work on others. One creates bone assignments from the closest joints (single or double, as appropriate), and another creates smoothing groups by following the discontinuities in UV mapping on adjacent faces. Of course, the BoneTool allws you to make multiple assignments and weightings, and works on Sims2 as well as models for Torque. I have another one that fixes all the rounding errors from the MilkShape float->byte weighting conversions.

I'm not teamed with anybody, or working on any special projects. I am sort of waiting until Sims3 comes out, or something else catches my imagination, and I am trying to get a suite of home-grown tools, especially for animations. I have some of them working, and want to add other parts to convert animations as needed. Anyway, if you have something special in mind, let me know (you can PM me at the ms site with your email, I learned on an old email address of mine never to post it anywhere, unless you are tired of it, because the spammers will ruin it).

<* Wes *>