Lee's Lightwave to B3D exporter - problem

Lee's exporter is a terrific tool but I seem to have hit a snag.

B3D interprets keyframes in a linear fashion; lightwave does it with curves (splines). One problem this causes is feet slipping when the character has motion in his torso. My intended solution was to just keyframe the multiple leg bones in every frame. But here's the rub, when you keyframe multiple bones (in a chain) on every frame the exporter appears to fail to keep up.

Example: when a run cycle that has 4 bones (left/right upper leg/lower leg) key framed on every frame is exported the motion is reduced to virtually no movement, the legs barely shuffle back and forth.

Any suggestions or workarounds that I'm missing?

Thanks!

Dustin

its a lightwave thing

i use create frame all items in object, and i keyframe every 4 frames. also you need to add tension in the lightwave graph editor..i thinks its either -1 or 1 on the tension box to nail down the spline.

also i have frame 0 as the standard pose (arms out)
then 1-20 walk, keyframe every 4 make sure the 1st and last frame are keyframes then, i copy frame 0 to 21, so the next cycle starts at 22, this helps to iron out any spline movement from previous cycle

i just prefer doing it this way..

Thanks for the response! I was afraid of that answer. I have too much quick animation movement to limit it to every fourth frame. I've played with exporting it as an .x file but my anims are extremely long and the file size prohibitive. I guess I'll have to break down and create a system to import LW .chan files so that way I can keep the anim accurate while still keeping the size down.

You might want to increase the FPS in Lightwave to give more resolution. So instead of 60 FPS, up it to 240 FPS and then keyframe every 4th frame to get the desired effect.

try the tension option im sure that will solve your probs
if you are familiar with the GraphEditor

if not:
just run the graph editor and select the frame where the problem starts then set the tension for that frame...you should be fine

Thanks Lee! What a great little program. I was afraid to multiply the fps due to the fact that the length of some of the continuous animation reaches a couple of minutes. (3000 frames * 4 = 12000 frames!!!) But even at that insane length the file size is only around 3.5 megs. I'm back in business!!!