We need help on blender! HELP!

[MoonSight]

Hi there! Symbol here.

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@honestabelink and i was trying to make a new skeleton and animation for a new character i was making

the animation part is file, i;m good enough to make a okay looking animation

but in order to add it to the game i’ll need a proper skeleton

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i did watch @voxel_pirate s video but i didn’t manage to find a section where he talks about how to ‘make’ a new skeleton

i’ll need someone to skype me, but posting a replies would be fine (it’ll take a long time though)

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thees are the list of what i need to learn

1. to make a proper skeleton and getting it properly preparing for animating

2. proper import/export of the skeleton and animation

3. animating with parented parts besides the Root and getting the animation to read properly in StoneHearth (if it’s possible)

4. making a meta file (properly and in/exporting)

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if you can only teach me 1 and 2, it would be good enough.
but i’ll need 3 to speed up my process and 4 to speed up the preporation

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Anyways PLEAS, if you know how to do that PLEAS let me know and PLEAS teach me how

i’D went through 5 times of animating, all to just be nothing because of a unknown problem

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Symbol out!

[Heimerdinger]

i see someone is doing the same thing i am doing XD

[Yeti]

Very bottom of website gives you the way to do it…
http://www.stonehearth.de/weblog/blender/manual-english/manual-2-workflow#22
You basically need to set the origins of the parts of your character in the place you want to pivot around.
Voxel_Pirate’s tutorial on animation with origins
Then add helper bones. (Website I posted above has all of the information somewhere…)
Then export as skeleton.
This one of @voxel_pirate’s videos has the placement of the helper bones of a female settler. (toward the end)

(root, body position, main hand, off hand)(I think you need root and body position for anything…)
I figured out how to do this a few weeks ago, but I am sill missing a lot of parts to be able to implement it into the game.

[Wombat85]

You should have the skeleton in place before you animate, but anyway. Lets look at the male human to see what we have to do:

{
“type” : “rig”,
“skeleton” : {
“root”: [15.5,15.5,0],
“bodyPosition”: [15.5,15,7.5],
“pelvis”: [15.5,15,7.5],
“torso”: [15.5,15.5,10],
“head”: [15.5,15,18],
“leftShoulder”: [21,15.5,15.5],
“leftArm”: [23,15,11],
“leftHand”: [23,15,10],
“leftThumb1”: [22,12,9],
“leftThumb2”: [22,11,7],
“leftFinger11”: [25,13,8],
“leftFinger12”: [25,13,6],
“leftFinger21”: [25,15,8],
“leftFinger22”: [25,15,6],
“leftFinger31”: [25,17,8],
“leftFinger32”: [25,17,6],
“offHand”: [23,15,7],
“rightShoulder”: [10,15.5,15.5],
“rightArm”: [8,15,11],
“rightHand”: [8,15,10],
“rightThumb1”: [9,12,9],
“rightThumb2”: [9,11,7],
“rightFinger11”: [6,13,8],
“rightFinger12”: [6,13,6],
“rightFinger21”: [6,15,8],
“rightFinger22”: [6,15,6],
“rightFinger31”: [6,17,8],
“rightFinger32”: [6,17,6],
“mainHand”: [8,15,7],
“leftFoot”: [19,14,5],
“rightFoot”: [12,14,5]
},
“animation_root” : “file(…/animations/male)”,
“effects_root” : “file(…/effects)”,
“postures” : “file(…/postures.json)”,
“collision_shape” : {
“type” : “cylinder_collision_shape”,
“radius” : 5,
“height” : 35
}
}

Each body part needs its base corodniate taken from where it exits in the quibicle file. The simplest way to find each cordinate is to simply start counting on the model. Root is the center on the ground. Rest is strait forward.

[Drackonian]

If you are making smoother looking models I would advise you use 3d coat instead of blender. Mostly because coat is so much easier to use.

[honestabelink]

To anyone asking the same question/looking for help I’ve notice something strange.

3ds max

blender

Both of these are imports of the dryad head made by @Hyrule_Symbol. Both are also .obj’s exported from StoneVox.

As you can see in 3ds Max the obj gets loaded with the head facing against 3ds max’s forward. Where as in blender the head loads facing its forward.

I am not too familiar with 3d modeling, but this seems like a problem to me.

@Hyrule_Symbol and I seem to have gotten the animation playing, or at least it’s working a lot better than it was before. But we still have an issue with the animation seeming to be mirror over the x-axis. ie the left becomes the right and vice-versa.

I am assuming the above is cause, but I don’t understand 3d modeling enough to understand why the difference exists between blender and max.

Any ideas?

Anyone with Qubicle and Max… do you see the same results as I do?

@Yeti

I figured out how to do this a few weeks ago, but I am sill missing a lot of parts to be able to implement it into the game.

do you still have your files… i’d like to test them if they too are reversed

Overall if you need to get an animation in and it doesn’t matter that it’s mirror I can do it. The mirroring is the thing I am stuck on

[Yeti]

Obj, json, and meta files:
Link to dropBox

[Drackonian]

I meant 3d coat not 3 ds max

[Drackonian]

Remember guys blender has a very steep learning curve, so take it easy

[honestabelink]

Thank you very much @Yeti,

Your files have helped me identify/clarify a bug in StoneVox’s obj exporter. Well… I guess it’s not a bug per se. It’s more about how axis’s are aligned.

StoneVox is currently exporting objs facing the wrong direction, essentially mirrored, say in Max, over the y-axis. This then leads to animations that play inverted over what is expected.

Bringing the obj into Max and applying the mirror modifier over the y-axis, exporting, then bringing that into Blender, and following the steps to create a skeleton and such, yields the results we are looking for.

Overall it will be a small change that i need to do to StoneVox to get this corrected, and it’s my bad to begin with.

Thanks again @Yeti, your files really help me to clarify what I had realized after my previous post. By the way are you interested in getting your Yeti into SH. I’d be glad to setup the basics for you, if you’d like to do the animations and such.

Just to clarify again both Blender and Max axis’s are aligned the same way. My previous post was wrong as I assuming something that I didn’t fully test/understand

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@Drackonian

Thank you. I’ve only had light experience in Max creating some 3d models for small games I’ve never finished.

3d modeling is really a complicated topic, overall I find Max far easier to understand than Blender, Blenders UI along with it’s controls seem to not really make much sense from a design standpoint when you compare them to Max. Though definitely Blender is truly an really amazing program and is a great alternative to Max. I am going to look into MaxScript myself sometime and get an animation export for Max together. I know Tom has one… perhaps he’ll give it to us before then.

Overall I’d like eventually for StoneVox to have animation support built right into it. This would cut down the workflow greatly and reduce the need for Blender and Max all together. This wouldn’t be coming anytime soon… at least I don’t think. But it will come eventually .

[Miturion]

@Drackonian

Remember guys blender has a very steep learning curve, so take it easy

It is actually not that hard. I was thinking the same about blender the first time I looked at it, untill I made some animations. Animating stonehearth models in blender is quite easy with voxelpirate’s add-on and video’s. The hardest part is actually making the animations look good. But that is not really blender to blame.

[Drackonian]

Yeah I know ,but for someone who is relatively nooby it may be overwhelming at first because ther are so many things you can do.

[Relyss]

In fact, this is one thing I wanted to ask you, @honestabelink. The export to .obj settings for StoneVox. I was planning secretly to make some modding tutorials for newbies and I need those settings, but I don’t have the time to make and check in-game if the animation was exported correctly.

For Qubicle, the obj export settings are:

• Export As: One Object Per Matrix
• Material: SimpleTex

Settings for SimpleTex:

• Colormap: Use colors of selected matrices
• Pixels per color: 1 pixel
• Faces per color: 1
• Padding: (checked or unchecked, I had it unchecked but I saw that Tom had it checked. Not sure if it’s relevant)
• Draw outlines to texture: unchecked
• Outline color and outline opacity (it’s indifferent as we didn’t checked the above setting)
• Don’t overwrite existing texture map: unchecked

General settings:

• Scale factor: 1.00 (if the model is too big in Blender, make the grid bigger)
• Remove lamina faces: checked
• Remove completely surrounded cubes: checked
• Move center to world origin: unchecked

I can see why the axis mirroring was a problem. In Qubicle and the game, the vertical axis is Y and in Blender is Z, for example. But I managed to finish animations with this discrepancy so in this case it wasn’t a problem.

[honestabelink]

Hi @Relyss,

So you are asking what settings users will need for StoneVox to export to .obj for animation?

StoneVox’s export settings are really straight forward and allow little control, StoneVox is specific to StoneHearth, basically there are no export settings users need to worry about.

Users could, if they choose to, export the .obj with position offsets, mainly to get the model positioned over 0,0,0 for animation purposes. But again this would be up to the users, they could always just move it around in Blender or Max.

StoneVox offers a center align button to make getting the center position easy, it can be seen next to the “Export Origin” textbox.

Overall I need to take the time to fix the above issue. The issue will be fixed either by tomorrow or the day after ;).

Just so you know

StoneVox takes a different approach to producing the .obj’s over Qubicle. Qubicle uses texture-coords and an actual image file to create the colors seen on the obj. StoneVox packages the colors right into the .mtl file, so… the only files users need to worry about from StoneVox when it comes to .obj’s is the actual .obj file and the .mtl.

If you have any other questions feel free to ask, and if you’d like me to test somethings in-game, I’d be glad to give them a go.

[Yeti]

Ummm… about that StoneVox… I actually used Qubicle 2.0 for my models(unless that is what you thought I was using). Just want to clarify in case you thought I was using StoneVox.

[Heimerdinger]

you fixed it? yessssssssssss

[honestabelink]

Sorry…

Perhaps I didn’t explain myself good enough…

I actually assumed you used Qubicle, this was also hinted to me in the fact that your files came with a image file, something that StoneVox does not do. Files from Qubicle I knew would be correct and a good reference.

I used your file to see how it opened up in Blender and Max. Your .obj opened differently then how the ones exported from StoneVox did, allowing me to see that StoneVox’s exporter had a bug in it.

I hope this clears things up.

@Heimerdinger

Yes, it is fixed