exporting anims, problem with monster model

[wallasaurus]

Hi folks,

Been very busy at work lately so slow progress, but I have my mummy in game. I'm having real problems getting my exported anims to work in game. Need to dig in and find out what's causing the editor to crash - the log isn't a great help.

Anyway, maybe I can get it working for christmas, that was my plan - xmas gift to you all.

Any folks winning with animations want to share knowledge?

cw

[Xanathar]

I was tweaking the animation editor with a preset to help with very simple monsters but hit a wall like ten days ago. JohnWordsworth gave me the solution but I didn't have time to try due to Christmas pressures

So, I'm losing, not winning, but I can share what I know, if it can be of any help.

• It seems all the mesh must be in a single node. That node must be specified in the monsters.lua file, if wrong it causes a crash.
• That node must have skeletal information
• Another node named "capsule" must be present in the model

[JohnWordsworth]

Hey both! I too have crashing problems with animated models that play correctly in the GMT. I hope to resolve these in the next couple of days now that the XMas stresses are almost over .

That's interesting Xanathar about mentioning the mesh node in monster.lua and that being the only animated node. Not much to add at this point I'm afraid, but feel free to ask any specific questions. Hopefully in the next couple of days I will have a working model and some more answers!

[wallasaurus]

hey guys, thanks for the infos.

so I can export my anim to game format, and re-import to max, works fine.

I need to check some files from the modpack and see if there are differences I think. I've added cpasule node, it was missing, but it didn't stop it crashing.

I'll post anything interesting I can find out.

[wallasaurus]

oh!

all working now - not sure what I did wrong but hey! video in a sec.

[wallasaurus]

Apologies for bad animation - it's not my area.

But here we have custom model, custom skeleton and custom anim - all seems to work.

I will now continue with the animation set and we will have a new monster in its entirety.

https://vimeo.com/56180565

Cheers and merry christmas!

cw

[Skuggasveinn]

Great work, I have some meshes and I have weight painted them and rigged, so I can move them about and create animations.
But then I'm just stuck, I don't have a clue how to go about exporting them to LoG (your max scripts walla seem to export them but it all comes out wrong in the GMT, I haven't even tried to get them into the game yet.)

The points from Xanathar are news to me, I will have to create the nodes hes talking about.

So I'm kindly asking if someone can explain to me the process of the export.

best regards.
Skuggasveinn.

[wallasaurus]

I've updated the tools for max. There were some bugs in there - hence the slow progress.

still not super user friendy, I will work on ergonomics now it is seeming to be functional!

Here's how to do it with my scripts.

1) your model and skeleton are setup and in max. Model should be editable mesh format with skin modifier on top and in the bind pose. Influence limit set to 4, weights normalised. 1 material ID per material, multi sub material applied if needed - this might till e buggy, needs more work. Single material definitely works, and creates meshsegment with name of the material applied, so this is what you name your grimrock material for it to show in game.

2) select the mesh _and_ the deformer joints and export model. I will automate this so whatever mesh is selected, the dependent heirarchy will get picked up for free. For now, be patient. (make selection set to simplify future export.

3) To export anim, select animation heirarchy and export anim.

Setup in grimrock the scripts and it should work!

Pls grab latest max script here: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5440025/GRIMRO ... NCTIONS.ms

Give it a go and let me know how progress is.

Cheers,

cw