Bip's

I have an animated Bipped model in MAX.

Exporting it to 3ds to load into blitz gave some weired results.

Also the mesh was not animating , I could however see the bip part animating.

I then tried to export it as B3d and still no luck.

Has anyone else had this or got a fix for it ?

I think a post like this deserves nothing but contempt.

Bit more detail might help.

What? so it's not animating but it is? The Bip part?

You're having a laugh aren't you.

3ds does not support skeletal animation. There's nothing you can do to make it work in 3ds. Same applies to .x as far as Blitz is concerned. B3d is the one and only choice for skeletal animation.

Now as for b3d not working, that depends on a few things. How did you export it and how is the model rigged to the biped? B3d Pipeline only supports Skin, not Physique, and is very fussy about things like having a vertex which isn't assigned or having a bone with no vertices assigned to it, and a bunch of other stuff.

I use Ultimate Unwrap as a mid point. I export from 3dsMax using the U3d exporter, then convert to b3d in UU. The advantage of this is that the U3d exporter is very forgiving and also supports Physique as well as Skin.

Can't help any more without more information.

@ Rob, Yeah I see what you mean. I'll have to ask my artist though as its his model. I will give him a link to the thread and get him to reply.

until then.

Its now a rigged model, and im using the b3d pipeline, now in the preview wndow it loows cool, and it all animates and walks like I expect it to.

But then I load it into blitz all I get is the head moving and the body part dont animate.

The only thing you can do in a situation like this is to run through a checklist of possible causes.

For example:

1) Are all the vertices of the mesh welded? (Select all vertices and choose 'Weld Selected' in Max).
- You need a contiguous mesh.
- You don't want the head and torso as seperate meshes - that's just a requirement for Quake III. It's got to be one complete mesh.

2) Have you initialised the Physique modifier properly? (i.e. No Blending, Rigid)

3) Have you 'Locked the Vertices' in the Physique modifier?

4) Has B3D Pipeline been installed properly?

5) Are the export settings for Pipeline set correctly?

Regards,

Rogue Vector

http://yavin.binary-people.com/source/test.zip

This is the source max 5 model and an exported version of it.

I hope some one can show me what im doing wrong. I might have been coding for years but still fresh and new to the world of bones and character models and stuff like this, so go easy on me.

You need to change your code to:

Graphics3D 800,600,16,2
SetBuffer BackBuffer()
Cls

camera=CreateCamera() 
PositionEntity camera,0,3,-10

light=CreateLight() 
RotateEntity light,90,0,0 

hotdog=LoadAnimMesh("walk.b3d")
foo=FindChild(hotdog,"Box02");**** Find the skin
PointEntity camera,hotdog
Animate foo;**** Animate the skin

While Not KeyDown(1)  

UpdateWorld 
RenderWorld 

Flip
 
Wend 

End 

When you export with pipeline, there should have been a bit of info to the right which says:

Blitz3d animation commands do not animate skinned meshes below the Scene Root (Use FindChild() to animate them explicitly)

So its as simple as the example shows. You just have to find your skin and animate that.

I don't see the problem. Your b3d does exactly the same thing your Max file does. The right arm bends up and down a couple of times. That's all the Max file does.

[edit]NM.. didn't see the bb source code. Just used the model and my own code.[/edit]

Thanks Big. I didnt know you had to doa findchild to animate it. I do now though and its looking good so thanks.