Hello,
I am building a game, I have seen forum posts stating that in August 2011 GEO will run in the new friendly version of Blender.
However for the time being I am living in 2.49b (I used to try and use
Collada2POD to convert my models into .pod format but then I learnt that
doesn't handle skinned animation correctly).
I have seen old lists stating that:
1 - 'Export options->Geometry' not functional: Geometry will always exported.
2 - 'Geometry options->Triangle sorting method' not implemented.
3 - 'Geometry options->Interleave vectors' not implemented.'
4 - Skinning done with envelopes is not supported.
5 - Exported camera position is not correct.
6 - Post-export command-line not functional on Windows.
7 - User Interface not using common interface.
However so long as I can produce indexed skinned animations I can
develop content ready to be re-exported in August more efficiently and I
can get to work on other things putting this issue to bed. Which leads
me to the point of this thread. I have created several 1000polygon
shapes with as many as 18 bones (max 4 per vertex) and had them partially animate
correctly. So I went to basics with a simple shape with two bones and a
simple configuration.
Here is the simple model showing its skeleton twisting the shape in x-ray mode, every vertex is painted by at least one bone.
[Larger Image: http://postimage.org/image/hw21knms/]
Below is the bi-product of my model going through the exporter with skinned animation into PVRShaman. The result is similar with many various tweaks to the exporters settings. Even with the complex meshes only some vertices always stretch into 0 or stretch into infinity like someone is stencil buffering them from zero toward the shapes centre. PVRShaman still animated the mesh correctly despite this warping.
[Larger Image: http://postimage.org/image/312ig8890/]
You can click for a larger image [Edit: no you cant so I added in links for that], for those not that interested there are some massive numbers on some vertex positions and other values such as the tangents shown in the image causing the model to warp off into a seemingly
infinitely far away distance.
When I load these models into my engine my "draw skinned mesh" runs
through fine but nothing is visibly drawn. My engine can display the
ChameleonMan so I am not overly worried by this as I haven't spent
lengths of time examining why I cannot see the messed up results, it
might just be my cameras configuration.
Long story short I would like to know IF before the end of August there is any pipeline that will get a version of Blender to produce a correctly functioning skinned animation of any level of complexity that I can use. If there is not then I will switch my priority to getting other shaders prepared and just use Chameleon man as a place holder for validating my engines capability to draw skinned meshes. Can anyone verify that the August update will bring the capacity to get correctly scaled and transformed animated models from Blender to POD if it is not possible now?
I assumed if it was not possible to produce skinned animation in Blender that the User Guide would have had a warning message under section 1.7 to give the heads up. I remember reading information stating that "Some" models need tweaks to get their matrices to export correctly but this is affecting every model I touch.
Is there or will there be a cure? I am happy to share that tiny scene if I appear to be the only one experiencing trouble. In fact here is a copy for anyone interested in testing my end of the stick http://www.2shared.com/file/8mjyH1by/finalattempt.html
Please help me stop my project from tanking, skeletal animations are a key component! My only alternative is to checkout the going rate of modellers who have expensive tools that can do the job for me.
Many Thanks
EnlightenedOne
EnlightenedOne2011-07-12 13:35:16
