Exporting Animation Sections From 3dsMax

Community Forums/Developer Stations/Exporting Animation Sections From 3dsMax

Gabriel(Posted 2003) [#1]
I have a character with 720 frames of animation. I want to export those frames into 20 different files, each with just a few of the frames. I'm exporting with Ultimate Unwrap mainly. I use the time configuration to select the frames I want to export, export to U3d and sit back and watch as it exports all the wrong frames.
Basically if I configure frame 400 as the start frame, and 429 as the end frame, it exports frames 0-29. It exports the correct number of frames, but it always starts at zero.

So I need a way to export the frames I want to export, correctly, either using the Ultimate Unwrap Exporter, or Pudding's B3d Pipeline, or something else I haven't thought of. Suggestions please?


Skitchy(Posted 2003) [#2]
It's a workaround, but why not just highlight every keyframe in the timeline and move them all back.

Example :- you want frames 10 to 20 - move the whole timeline back 10 frames (so that frame 10 is now frame 0), set length of export to 10.

I'm *sure* that'll work, but *why* you would want to do it this way is another matter. The disk space you are wasting will be ridiculous. Why not export the whole thing as a single sequence and use ExtractAnimSeq() to do the same job? Or just set the current frame yourself using code?

Hope that helps :)


Gabriel(Posted 2003) [#3]
Because I want the same set of animations for six different characters. I'm currently wasting far MORE disk space by having six different characters, all with the same animations embedded in the file. I really only need six static characters and one set of animations.

My initial plan was to Load a single animation file with all the animations in with LoadAnimSeq, and extract those with ExtractAnimSeq onto each of the six static, rigged models. Unfortunately, ExtractAnimSeq doesn't seem to work once you LoadAnimSeq, only if the animations were already in the original file.

In order to save the diskspace, you're right I might have to go through dragging all the keyframes back. It's gonna take a heck of a lot of time, but it should save me 4mbs ( uncompressed ) off my final download size.


jfk EO-11110(Posted 2003) [#4]
why don't you use 3dsmax to export a single part of the animation? As I remember this works well (or are you talking about B3D boned Animations?). The Animation Files don't need texture information inside. It's ok when only the first Mesh has all Infos about Textures etc.


Gabriel(Posted 2003) [#5]
Yes I am talking about B3d boned animations. I'm limited to either Unwrap3d or B3d Pipeline really as far as viable export options. It seems to be a bug with the way Unwrap3d exports to b3d as it gets the frames wrong from within Unwrap 3d as well as from the Max plugin. Maybe I need to update, the bug might have been fixed recently.


Rob(Posted 2003) [#6]
whats wrong with pudding's exporter?


Gabriel(Posted 2003) [#7]
Pudding's exporter is either a lot fussier than the U3d exporter or it plain doesn't like my characters. When I view the exported mesh in Blitz, the vertices are flying around in all directions, whereas the u3d exporter exports them perfectly. It also offsets my character by about 3 units on the y axis.

I have every single bone assigned to the skin modifier, even the ones that aren't being used. I have every single vertex assigned to one ( and only one ) bone.


jfk EO-11110(Posted 2003) [#8]
Maybe you need to set a keyframe for all bones in the first frame of every exported Sequence? So you would have to load the whole animation, set start and end of your sequence and make the 1st frame a global keyframe? This could be the reason why it don't works - maybe - probably - perhaps - possibly.


Gabriel(Posted 2003) [#9]
I don't think so. That's the one thing that Pudding's exporter does get right. And U3d is going back to frame zero for the first frame every time, so it's never looking any further than that for a keyframe.

In any case, if I had to do that, it would make my animations much bigger, so I probably wouldn't gain anything. I think I'll leave it as it is for now, and go back when the game is finished and see if the latest version of Ultimate Unwrap has fixed the problem with the b3d format. ( It only happens if I export to b3d.. within U3d it shows fine. )


Pudding(Posted 2003) [#10]
Can you send be a Max file that shows the problem?

I'd like to fix this...

-Pudding