XSI animation export: newbie question

[fouimet]

Hi!

I'm trying to use XSI 5.0 to create models and animations for OGRE and I am really a beginner in modelling.

The first thing I did is to add the "primitive" soccer ball included in XSI. I then exported it as a .mesh file using the ogre XSI exporter. Using CEGUI Mesh viewer, I managed to display the model properly. At this point, I keep it simple, I'm not even using materials.

Then, in XSI, I made a simple keyframed animation (3 keys). I translated the soccer ball on the Y axis up some and then back down for a really simple animation. This is where I get stuck. I never get the "animation" tab of the ogre exporter to activate. I tried Animate->Action->Store in XSI, but I don't really know what option to choose. Regardeless of the option selected, I get a "Mixer" branch in my XSI scene explorer but I still can't export the animation to OGRE.

Am I doing something wrong here? Could someone give me clear steps on how to export simple animations like a spinning ball or something like that?

Thanks for the help!

Fred.

[sinbad]

You're using the Azathoth exporter which doesn't support shape animation, only skeletal animation. The new version in CVS supports both, so if you like, grab CVS HEAD and compile the exporter for yourself if you want to try this out. Read the docs though since the approach is slightly different - the Azathoth version reads skeletal animations directly out of your action sources (even if they're not in the mixer currently), the Dagon (CVS HEAD) version exports directly from the mixer only (required for shape animation).

In the Azathoth version the animation tab is only activated if there are bones, since Azathoth only supports skeletal animation.

If you want an example, load in one of the XSI example scenes which has skeletal animation. I have used the 'red_jaiqua.scn' under XSI_SAMPLES to test skeletal animation with in the past, but others in that folder work too. The XSI tutorials on skeletal rigging and animation are very good, I suggest taking a look.

[fouimet]

Hi!

Thank you for the reply. I tried with the sample you mentionned (red_jaiqua) and it does extract the animation. I seem to still have a problem though with materials not being exported and CEGUI Mesh viewer crashes with the following errors "Can't assign material Material to SubEntity of entity because this Material does not exist. Have you forgotten to define it in a .material script?". I guess this problem occurs because XSIExporter doesn't generate the ".material" file.

I also compiled the new version of the XSIExporter but I'm still having problems. I'll get back to reading tutorials and see if I can figure out how to build models correctly. Thank you again for the quick answer.

Fred.

[Slicky]

For regular objects materials are exported. Check that you are using the right kind of material. It needs to be one of the real time materials like oglonepass.