Easy Ogre Exporter for 3DSMAX

[arkeon]

Hello !

I made several tests with the models I have to validate the skeleton exporter.
Could you send me your max file so I could see the difference with mines and maybe found the problem.

[impytus]

I cant send you the actual file itself or the bip files.

But I made this quite test similar to what I did with the spheres. and the problem still surfaced. maybe you can have a look at this to see what is going wrong for me.

impytustest.rar

(121.86 KiB) Downloaded 508 times

Ive included 2 bip files for you to use with in the mixer.

Hope you can figure it out as I really need to get this to work.

Thanks

[arkeon]

Thanks I'll look at this asap.

once again a strange thing in max, the skeleton axis depend of the view you created the biped.
I think that it will be ok if you create the bipeb in the front view.

However I'll try to find the universal way to do this ^^

[impytus]

That would be really great if you could, thank you. I know you must work on this in spare time so no pressure from me, but any chance of an ETA of fixing a universal way? Just so, when I get asked I have something of an answer.

Thanks again.

[arkeon]

Hello,

I'll try to look at this in evening this week or this weekend.
But first I need to understand why the root bone do not have the same axis and how to detect this cases

[arkeon]

Hi !

Finally I found the problem and a new release v1.1 is available on the trunk (on the wiki page).

I hope we're done with the skeletons this time

[impytus]

Wow great! speedy! ill see if it works later and ill post back here with the news.. good or bad.

[DaGuAr]

Hi!
First of all, thanks a lot for the exporter, it works great in 3ds Max 2009.
But I was wondering something...

Whenever I try to export a scene that contains different instances of a material inside multi-materials, the exported meshes rename the materials adding suffixes like "_1", "_2", "_3", etc. each time it finds a duplicated name.

I made a quick scene for example:
Let's say I have 3 materials and 2 objects/nodes.
Object01 contains material1 and material2, while Object02 contains material2 and material3.




If I export the scene, the mesh file for Object01 will export fine. But when exporting the second object, it'll load material2 a second time, and it's renamed to "material2_1". And the ".material" and ".scene" files also contains references to both "material2" and "material2_1".


I understand that this may be done this way to prevent that completely different materials that accidentally share the same name are grouped together and the exported meshes come out with incorrect assigned materials. But when you're sure you're using proper material names, it creates innecessary duplicated materials.

I was wondering if it could be possible to somehow add an option/checkbox to preserve material names so it doesn't add suffixes (at the user's own risk) or something like that? Thanks in advance.

[impytus]

Hi,

sorry to not get back to you for a while. The project was put on hold for a few weeks so I havnt been able to test it.

Unfortunately the updated plugin isn't working and I am getting the same results as last time.

I assume i got it from the correct place?
https://arkeon.dyndns.org/svn-scol/trun ... ax%202011/

[impytus]

oh the programmer just messaged me to tell me he found this in the ogre.log and perhaps it will help?

WARNING: the mesh 'fempcharBODY.mesh' includes vertices without bone assignments. Those vertices will transform to wrong position when skeletal animation enabled. To eliminate this, assign at least one bone assignment per vertex on your mesh.

[arkeon]

Hi !

strange I tested with the max you sent.
can you send me the max file with this another bug ?
Maybe that I should link this vertices with the root bone ?

[impytus]

Im not sure I can send the file. Is there nothing you can try without me sending the file?

[arkeon]

send it by mail, I won't use it for anything but testing and debug the exporter
it's the best way for me to reproduce the problem

[impytus]

Its not really my call to make. I'll find out tomorrow and get back to you. what is your email?

[arkeon]

Sorry DaGuAr I miss your post ^^

does this materials are instances or copies ?
every material with the same handle will not be exported twice but if this is a material copy with the same name it will be renamed.

Can you remake the same test with instantiated material ?

[DaGuAr]

I'm using instances. I dragged the standard materials to the multi-material slots and whenever it asked me Instance or Copy I always selected Instance.

For example, if I disable the diffuse texture of the blue material (just once, in any instance of it), the changes are reflected in every multi-material and object, and the blue color is completely replaced to the default gray color.


I'm using 3ds Max 2009 32bits, with the latest version of your exporter and exporting to Ogre version 1.8 with these settings.
Am I doing something wrong?
Thanks again.

[impytus]

Ive emailed you the max file arkeon. Hope it sent ok.

[arkeon]

Yes thanks, I see the problem ^^

but I don't know how max manage this case :/
what are Twists links used for on the biped ?

max link the Twist bones like this :
-> Clavicle
--> UpperArm
----> ForeArm
------> Hand
----> ForeTwist1
------> ForeTwist2
--------> ForeTwist3
--> UpperTwist1
......

so the twist bone are not linked to the correct parent :/
Max manage bones in world coordinates so it don't care of the bones hierarchy for the skinning part, but I need a correct hierarchy to convert to Ogre.
once again it's an another Biped magic case ^^

try to link the first twists to the upper bone if max allow this.

tell me if you found a max way to manage this.

[impytus]

twist links are there for better skin deformation for areas that rotate in more than 1 or 2 axis. shoulders are particularly important. The twists themselves are essentially bones that are linked to another bone... eg, to the upper arm bone. when the arm rotates along the length of the bone (i forget which axis this is) the twist bones rotate sequentially to give a more natural blend of weights. Not sure if that makes sense, Im not great at explaining jargon. essentially the skin is weighted to the twists and not the upper arm bone itself.

As for being able to re-parent it, that is not possible in biped at all.

As it stands the upper arm twists are parented to the clavicles and begin with the twist without a number and is in turn parent to 01 and then parent to 02. the lower arm twists are parented to the upper arm bone.

[arkeon]

Ok !

I'll try to find a way in this.

[impytus]

if you want a better understanding of the twist bones than my bad explanation... try rotating the upper arm bone along the local x axis (i checked) youll see how the shoulder skin weights barely move as they assigned to the top most twist bone. you will also see how the twists work too.

thanks....hope it all works out!

[impytus]

Oh and i should also mention that twists can be added to legs too, though i don't have them in this file

[arkeon]

Hi !

the Two last founded bugs are corrected

EOE v1.2 is available

- last bones on skeleton hierarchy are now exported correctly (this was the bug for the twists bones)
- Materials instances are now detected correctly (use the Mtl ptr and not the IGameMaterial ptr to compare ...)

Thanks to impytus and DaGuAr for their reports.

[DaGuAr]

Thanks Arkeon! Now it works great.

[arkeon]

Great

You're welcome !