Transfering animations - Need help
Hello all.
Long story short, I have a set of weapon animations that were animated before they were rigged.:\
What are my options for moving those animations to my rigged version of the model?
I am using 3dsmax.
Thanks in advance.
Long story short, I have a set of weapon animations that were animated before they were rigged.:\
What are my options for moving those animations to my rigged version of the model?
I am using 3dsmax.
Thanks in advance.
Replies
Because what you want is the vertex info of the animation which the non-rigged one has. If you can duplicate this, it should preserve it's keyframes.
If you export that as FBX then reimport, the animated mesh-bones should be converted into standard Max bones, in case you need that for some reason.
If you need to fit the animation to a specific rig, then you have to retarget: http://docs.autodesk.com/3DSMAX/15/ENU/3ds-Max-Help/index.html?url=files/GUID-A6EB9AE5-66ED-4400-8252-5E012AFBBEA0.htm,topicNumber=d30e263022
1) Like Eric said export to FBX and import. But you will need to click on the animated meshes and flag them as "bones" for the FBX export/importer to handle them. Select the meshes, go to Animation > Bone Tools and check on "Bone On". If you don't they will probably just import as meshes again and treat them as vertex animation instead of bones.
2) Use Jim Jaggers Animated Align script to align and key your new bone rig to the old animated meshes. You can do this manually but this makes it so much easier.
3) some 3rd way I was remembering but got sidetracked and completly forgot what it is... If I think of it I'll post it.
EDIT: oh yea I remember now, make sure the names of the meshes match the bones (technically you don't have to but it makes things easier), make sure that the pivot points for the bones match the pivots for the meshes.
Select the meshes and go, Animation > Save Animation.
Select the bones and go Animation > Load Animation, click sort by name and if you did everything right it should work flawlessly. Of course if you have different scale values on the meshes or different pivot orientations or funky names (box0002, bone99) then you have some tweaking that needs to be done.
Personally I would go with the animated align script or the export FBX option. And in the future... do it the right way the first time =P
I still find myself having some issues with this. Would anyone be interested in making some cash for doing this? IM or Skype ( osirisstudios ) me if you are interested.
I'll keep trying it out.
The method I had the best luck with, was the dupping the mesh and using it as bones, which I had already thought of before, I just didnt change them to bones in the animation menu.
The problem I am gaving is that certain elements are resizing themself on import.
Sounds like a Reset Xform is needed. Unfortunately this will kill the pivot, screwing up the animation. Here's a Reset Xform script that tries to avoid this problem...
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/clever-reset-xform
It's for this reason that anytime you get a mesh from a modeler you assume its dirty and they've screwed with the scale and transforms and you reset them to 0 0 0.
Right click the scale tool and you will get a pop up, if these aren't 100 across the board don't ever skin or animate it, those wonky values will cause all kinds of problems.
Instead of reset xform which will reset the pivot and fubar the animation try resetting just the scale and transforms, select your mesh/bones and in the command panel on the right, go to the Hierarchy Tab (three boxes linked to one big box), go down to reset, and click transform and scale, now check the numbers, everything should be 100 again. This won't realign the pivot point to the world like reset Xform and should allow the meshes animate properly.
Also, keep in mind that bones are nothing more than visual representations of the link between pivot points, how they look doesn't matter that much, unless they are distorting in weird ways when they rotate (which indicates the scale problem). IF the FBX exporter resets the scale on the bones and some just look bigger, that's fine, it won't have much of a barring on the final animation (provided the scale transform matrix is set properly).
Would anyone be up to checking an example file out to see if you can create a workflow to fix this problem?
haha, this is seriously going to make me pull my hair out!
Make a fresh copy of your weapon in its default position and freeze xform or whatevver you call it. Skin all the parts of the weapon to joints. Simply parent constrain the joints to the animated meshes. Bake the animation on the joints then export.