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[Legacy]

Hi, after some months I got back to exporting our animations into HeroEngine. I've got an export scene (basically a biped with SRB) where I load my .BIP anim in the same way I did before. Now, the animation exports fine but when I play it in the engine it screws the character into the ground.

I checked in the HE Viewer and I can see the animation playing fine, buy the Y AXIS IS UP in the visualizer cage o.O Both SRB and Bip01 have correct (Z up) orientation in max. I expect something must have gone wrong but I cannot possibly figure out what Anyone has any idea what should I look into?

Thanks

[HE-ANDY]

Y axis is indeed up.

[WorldWideZ]

does your export biped match the models one?

i use this method to export

1)create char file with mesh and biped , making sure all xforms are reset, model in T pose
2) make sure this T pose is saved as a max file at this stage and create the hero character folder
3) load the bip file to the max scene , and resize the frames bar to encompass all the frames but no more
4) under hero export , choose vda method , make sure the ticks are in the right boxes (repos to 0,0,0 is useful)
    should also see exclude meshes is ticked and your ready to export
5)write a asq file for the animation hgm file
6)upload to engine and test animation by possessing the char and using
   behave 0 anim * your_animation_name
   in the console screen

hope this check list helps you , if you create a new animation bip just load the max file from stage 2 and follow the steps as normal

[Legacy]

Y axis is indeed up.

I have another set of animations that I exported some months ago, coming from one author and being rotated in a completely equal way in 3ds max. When I loaded one of those older animations' .hgm I can see the cage's green (Y axis) visualizer pointing in the same way as it does in 3ds max (so that the skeleton is looking towards Y-). When I load both old and new anim into the viewer, I now have two skeletons, one rotated by 90 degrees from the other one.

Because I am using the very same basic scene to export and have almost equal .BIPs for both cases, I guess the problem must be in the export somewhere, but I cannot possibly find out where

[Legacy]

does your export biped match the models one?

i use this method to export

1)create char file with mesh and biped , making sure all xforms are reset, model in T pose
2) make sure this T pose is saved as a max file at this stage and create the hero character folder
3) load the bip file to the max scene , and resize the frames bar to encompass all the frames but no more
4) under hero export , choose vda method , make sure the ticks are in the right boxes (repos to 0,0,0 is useful)
    should also see exclude meshes is ticked and your ready to export
5)write a asq file for the animation hgm file
6)upload to engine and test animation by possessing the char and using
   behave 0 anim * your_animation_name
   in the console screen

hope this check list helps you , if you create a new animation bip just load the max file from stage 2 and follow the steps as normal

Yes, this is what I am doing. The animation exports fine, just it seems to be rotated in some strange way

[Legacy]

Small update: I explored both animation's in hero viewer more closely and when I explore the "GrannyRootBone" in detail view I can see their "initialPlacement" is indeed different when it comes to rotation o.O How can this happen?

[HE-BENNETT]

If you could provide a screenshot of the character "getting screwed into the ground" it would be helpful in determining the issue.

One thing I've found is trying to interpret the numbers in the viewer without context can be misleading.


It seems to me that something must have changed with your skeleton in Max since the last time you were exporting animations.

[Legacy]

If you could provide a screenshot of the character "getting screwed into the ground" it would be helpful in determining the issue.

One thing I've found is trying to interpret the numbers in the viewer without context can be misleading.


It seems to me that something must have changed with your skeleton in Max since the last time you were exporting animations.

Sure, here are two screens, one with old animation, one with new animation... You can see that there are two things happening - legs are placed "correctly" just the bip01 bone is where the SRB is. the top of the body is rotated in some strange way (but else playing the anim just fine and the skinning works as well).

I have three scenes with this sleleton - one I keep clean to have a backup, one I have modded for anim export (added SRB) and the other is where I skinned this placeholder character's geometry and from where I exported the char files (skeleton among them). I tried exporting the animation from all three and they all look the same. I don't know if I could have screwed all the three of then in the same way... Isn't there some setting in 3ds max that could be causing this?

[Stadi_Thompson]

Is it a dynamic character which has a base skeleton? Also are you using the same exporter version that you used with the old animations? Thanks.

[Legacy]

Is it a dynamic character which has a base skeleton? Also are you using the same exporter version that you used with the old animations? Thanks.

Yes, it's a dynamic character with base skeleton. I am using the latest exported plugin for this one so probably it's not the same version as the old one was exported back in May. Didn't expect this to be incompatible though...

[Stadi_Thompson]

make sure your base skeleton is re-exported to match your current pipeline version. if that doesn't work I suggest falling back to the older 2010/2011 exporter, which also works with 2012. let us know what happens. i had a similar issue moving to the new version of the pipeline as well, except with meshes.

[Legacy]

make sure your base skeleton is re-exported to match your current pipeline version. if that doesn't work I suggest falling back to the older 2010/2011 exporter, which also works with 2012. let us know what happens. i had a similar issue moving to the new version of the pipeline as well, except with meshes.

Thanks for suggestion! I tried to reexport just the skeleton itself but I wasn't lucky - the skinning got all messed up and no animation played correctly at all. However, when I tried to create a completely new dynamic character using the Character tools, I was able to export the animation so that it plays just fine.

If there is no other solution to this, I think I am gonna create my character definition from scratch and reexport all my anims. Its tedious, but at least it will work it seems. Then I'm going to freeze my art pipeline version and not update anymore, because it seems versions are not compatible among themselves

Thanks again for directing me on the right track.

[HE-Cooper]

Stadi, are you not able to export rigged meshes correctly with the current version of the art pipeline? Or am I misunderstanding?

[Stadi_Thompson]

Stadi, are you not able to export rigged meshes correctly with the current version of the art pipeline? Or am I misunderstanding?

I was talking about the hgm/facegen parts. The latest exporter doesn't work with them. Let me know if you want me to send over more detail, I think Bennett was looking into it.

[Legacy]

Okay, I was finally able to reexport my char using the new pipeline (from character tools it crashed several times and I had to export every piece manually) and now I have my dynamic char in-game along with a simple idle anim. The only weird thing is the skinning of his hands. I attached screen on what it does, it's pretty nasty. 3ds max does not show anything like that. I tried to redo hands' skinning from scratch but with no success.

I thought it is some max related issue but then I opened the skeleton, hands mesh and the anim in Hero Viewer and everything seems to be fine. So the only place where it's actually screwed is the game itself

Any ideas on this please?