SkinnedMesh::DTS::dancingKORK

#1 7:10pm: end of the day's session. Didn't get far with export of skinned mesh, having some difficulties replicating the hierarchy in the Help document, one issue I've seen before.

I remember in Max how you had to 'remove' the 'skinned' mesh from the hierarchy, with a snapshot; or other construct. I have absolutely no idea how to accomplish this with Houdini.

Also another observation: I did get something to export eventually, although even though my Scene contained a sequence node and it was setup, thus showing I had nodes moving and they needed to be exported. I got no sequence export, and it seems any object with a trailing number, this would include bones or null objects as 'mount' nodes, they seemed to want to be exported as geometry. Is there some method/cough/hack to get these objects considered nodes and not 'geometry' just because they have a trailing number? And well, how do you create a mountN? DTS node...

Another worrisome observation on existing content, Imported as FBX. Even though my sequence runs fine, the mesh moves and the bones/nulls seem to drive the mesh, the biped rig, does not export as a 'chain'...they are all considered children of the one Root node, which was the FBX object that arrived as a subnet node, with the drivers, meshes, and materials all nested inside the 'animated' object I imported. Wish there was way to extract the data into Houdini constructed controls, or chain, like the autoRig tool...which looks great, prolly cause you will HAVE to use it to link/parent rigs correctly.

Another observation: the documents show absolutely no Houdini method for producing 'nodes' for mounts[are they the NULL objects?]...these are pretty important constructs to have difficulties exporting. Cubes are nice, every game has them; they also have skinned meshes, for characterAvatars, and those are pretty important, more important than cubes!

I really think we need a Houdini guru...to help us here; telling us what is and isn't possible for the antiquated DTS/DSQ formats, which don't need all this super data controlling every little molecule of the shape...Ie, the simplest of tools/object controllers needed to get a game object working...it seems it would have been more efficient to approach it that way...tell, a Houdini-guru, how a shape needs to be setup; then they could provide the smoothest path, perhaps. It would be a bit different if we were all using this program and new it's capabilities/limitations. I know what's possible as DTS/DSQ from quite a few programs...this one is a total mystery...

#2 12:36pm: Nothing meaningful exported yet. I am just not understanding how the skinned mesh hierarchy is suppose to be constructed with Houdini tools...

The 'skinned' mesh is to be separate from the rigid mesh subTree, yet how do we accomplish this like we did in Max, where we take a snapshot of the mesh? Derek? anyone?

#3 10:57am

Success:

I have Rendered from Houdini, a DTS shape with animation and 8 autoDetail levels. It's dancingKORK, the demo KORK with his dance.dsq animation embedded.

#4 Nice stuff, Rex.

I'm still trying to get the exported DTS/DSQs from your scene to play nice with the existing orc DTS/DSQs => I think I'm nearly there, just a couple of node transforms not quite right.

When I have it working I'll add another example to the next Houdini release.