Character animation?

Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/Character animation?

Chroma(Posted 2006) [#1]
What are our options for animating character models these days? Is it still just keyframe animation or can we use bones now like in Milkshape (.b3d). It's been awhile since I've had to do this.

Also what are you guys using to animate your models?


Chroma(Posted 2006) [#2]
Well I see we can use joints from milkshape. That's just peachy.


Mustang(Posted 2006) [#3]
You can use bones - for example animate boned / skinned meshes with Lightwave / XSI and convert them to .B3D tha has bones support. Usually you export your animations to .X (DX8 format) and then convert that with UUW3D or Milkshape to .B3D. It's a shame you can't use DX8 .X directly because Blitz3D supports only DX7 .X that does not have bones support.


Steven Noyce(Posted 2006) [#4]
You asked if it is still just keyframe animation. How do you do that? I am familiar with bones, and would like to do just plain keyframe animation for some things, but don't know how. I use blender and milkshape.


Iamhere(Posted 2006) [#5]
I use Wings3D for modelling, export to .3ds
convert with decorator to .b3d
and import in to AnimB3D and make a Bone-Animation there
but you can also use PaceMaker and load .3ds direct
or other Animation programms.


Fuller(Posted 2006) [#6]
AnimB3d doesnt work for me. It's always giving me some error message when I load the .b3d


jfk EO-11110(Posted 2006) [#7]
AnimB3D seems to be the only B3D animator that is for free right now. Pacemaker and CharacterFX are cheap and useful. (Tho CharacterFX' further development seems to be frozen)

Plain Keyframe animation for rotation/Scale/Move animations can be done with any tool that is capable of exporting animated .3DS or animated dx7-compatible .X . Unlike B3D these formats don't support bones and weighted/shared vertices, instead they are built ontop of a child mesh hierarchy (eg. hand>lower arm>upper arm>chest>waist)

To be honest, right now I cannot remember any tool that can save animated .3ds other than 3D Studio Max. It's a mean world :.(


Iamhere(Posted 2006) [#8]
@Fuller
Did you have the newest version ?
Or possibly your B3D file is a multipe mesh.


Chroma(Posted 2006) [#9]
Milkshape 1.7.6 is exporting .b3d with bone animations. It's a great solution. The UV mapping is lacking (bought UnWrap3D to do that). Other then that, Milkshape rocks for low poly modleling and animation.


Ricky Smith(Posted 2006) [#10]
Milkshape is great for modelling but for animation it's not so good - it doesn't support vertex weighting and has no IK tool.


Beaker(Posted 2006) [#11]
I recommend FragMotion and PaceMaker.


Jaime(Posted 2006) [#12]
Has anyone have Caligari gameSpace? It has b3d export capabilities, and it looks great!

Also I'd like to try ZBrush... but this one is expensive! I can't afford both of them...

Which one would be the best?