Trouble exporting skinned animation from maya

PowerVR Insider
1

Hello,

I have trouble exporting any kind of skinned animation file for matrix palette skinning (using maya 2008):

No matter what settings I tried, the animation won’t work properly. Most of the time it seems that the bone assignment/weighting is not working at all.

The animation looks like if there would just be a simple rotation for the whole model going on.
(Export skin modifiers, export controllers and export matrices are all checked)

The example .pod file from the matrix palette skinning example (the mallet) animates perfectly fine.
But even the most simple skinned animation that I export doesn’t animate the way it should.

Is there anything special to be aware of when exporting a skinned mesh with bones .pod file from maya?

Best regards,
Phil


2

Hi,

 

One special thing to be aware of when exporting a skinned mesh is that .pod only supports a maximum of 4 bone influences per vertex. So it's worth checking this is the case with your scene. If this is fine or changing it doesn't fix your problem would it be possible for you to send your scene to devtech@imgtec.com so we could take a look.

 

Thanks,

 

Scott

 
3

Hello,

I’m experienceing the exact same problems as phmaho. I’ve tried setting “max bone influences” to 3, but the problem still remains.

I’ve sent you my scene to devtech@imgtec.com

Thanks,

Rickard

4

Hi,

 

I've had a look at your scene and was able to export it successfully. The options that affect the export of skinned animations were set as follows


  • Export controllers was enabled.

  • Export skin modifiers was enabled with max simultaneous matrices set to 9.

  • In the vertex vector formats options I had bone indices set to unsigned byte and bone weights set to float.

If you have any problems when using these settings send us your .pod file and we'll take a look.


Thanks,

 

Scott
5

Hi,

Thanks for your answer.

Unfortunately, the results were still the same. The animation is there, but it almost looks like the entire mesh is skinned to the root joint, as the whole mesh is spinning around instead of bending.

I've sent you my .pod file and a screen of the settings I used.

By the way, do you have any idea of when we can expect a new version of the PVRShaman? I read here on the forum that it's going to support viewing of skinned meshes.

Thanks,

Rickard

Rickard2009-02-10 08:48:40
6

Hi,

 

The .pod file you sent works fine for me in PVRShaman. What are you using for testing it?

 

You are correct the next version of PVRShaman will support the viewing of skinned meshes and it should be released by the end of the month.

 

Thanks,

 

Scott
7

Hi,

We’re testing it by loading it into the “MatrixPalette” example. The mallet example .pod animates perfectly fine, but as mentioned above, our mesh is spinning around instead of bending.

Thanks,

Rickard

8

Hi,

We’ve managed to solve the problem. The key was to animate every single translation,rotation and scale value for all the joints, and to leave the “export matrices setting” unchecked.

Still weird though, that you need to animate all values for the Maya exporter to work.

Thanks,

Rickard

9
Hi,

 

It's very weird. I tried the .pod file you supplied in MatrixPalette and the animation was correct. Have you made any modifications to the MatrixPalette example (I only changed the camera settings)? Which platform were you running it on?

 

Thanks,

 

Scott
10

Hi,

We’re using the MatrixPalette example ported by Oolong Engine. No other modifications has been done in the code. We’re running the example in the iPhone simulator.

Regards,

Rickard

11

Hello,

I could resolve all animation problems using the settings and suggestions posted in this thread. Thank you very much.

One important thing I want to add is that matrix palette skinning does not work correctly within the iPhone simulator. But if exported properly, it works fine on the actual device.

P.S. Sorry for my long absence from this thread (we just had to switch to different creation tools in our artistic pipeline), and I just came back to do some animation export recently.

12

Hello,

I’m trying to get animations to export correctly and play them using the latest distribution of PVRShaman which supports skinned animations.

My models are exporter but when animated, they look like 3 models were in the scene and the animation is totally screwed up.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!! I can sen you the maya and pod files I’m using so you can check them!

- Ricardo

13
skumancer wrote:

My models are exporter but when animated, they look like 3 models were in the scene and the animation is totally screwed up.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!! I can sen you the maya and pod files I'm using so you can check them!

- Ricardo
 

Hi,

 

Could you send your files to devtech@imgtec.com  please and we'll take a look.

 

Cheers,

 

Scott
14

Awesome! I just sent you the files. Keep me posted!





- Ricardo

15

I sent you the files. Thanks a lot for the help!!

16
skumancer wrote:
I sent you the files. Thanks a lot for the help!!
 

Hi,

 

Looks like there is a bug in the exporter with triangle strips and bone batching. For the time being until it is fixed setting the primitive type to 'Triangle list' allows your model and animation to be exported correctly.

 

Thanks,

 

Scott
17

Anyone know if triangle strips with bone batching has been fixed or is being worked on?

18
gtmacdonald wrote:
Anyone know if triangle strips with bone batching has been fixed or is being worked on?
 

The problem hasn't been fixed yet but should be for our next SDK release in August.

 

 
19

I am having an issue a bit similar to skumancer. Every skinned mesh I’ve tried (even the most basic one) looks like it exploded in Shaman and on the iPod. I’ve tried every solution posted here, but to no avail. I even took a look at the skinned model examples in the Shaman examples folder, and they have the same problem.

We’re using Maya 2008 and OGLES 1.1. I will email you my files and an image of what I’m seeing.

20

I can testify that it does work, you just have to fiddle with it. I got strange pointy mesh animations when I tried tri-strips. Only triangle lists work atm. And for 2008, in order to get the example code to work I had to set bone indices to “unsigned byte”. Also if your bone influences per vert are more than 4, it crashes the example code, but ran for me in pvrshaman. Hope that helps.