Animation Ignoration

Hi! I am looking at an animated 3ds model from DarkMatter (M-Raptor-Move.3ds). The following has me puzzled.

1) Blitz3d shows the animation, no problem!
2) I loaded the model into Milkshape, which reports "30 total frames", but when Milkshape "animates" the model, nothing moves.
3) I loaded the same model into Character FX, which reports "48 total frames" but again, nothing moves.

Also, in Character FX the model appears greatly distorted when compared to its appearance in Blitz or Milkshape.

I have several questions because I am new to this stuff and I don't yet understand what's going on.

Is either Milkshape or CFX useful for animating this model such that Blitz3d can use the results? If so, will the procedure necessitate the use of "b3d" format, or is it possible to continue in "3ds" format? I suspect that I would need Autodesk software to edit "3ds" animations, but I just don't know for sure. Is there a low-cost software that can correctly indicate the "3ds" keyframes?

Why can Blitz animate the model, but the other software cannot? Is it because they just don't deal with "3ds" animations at all?

Finally, why does the model appear so distorted in CFX?

Thanks for any help you can provide!

I think the 'bone weights' are not set in CFX - dont know why not, so every bone affects each vertex equally which leads to distortion.

I think the issue is that the DarkMatter models are heirarchy animated (they are 3ds after all) but Milkshape and CharacterFX only support skeletal animation.

I prefere to animate the Darkmatter Chars in 3D Studio MAX. But CharacterFX does support Hierarchy Animation too. I don't know if it can load and display 3ds Animations, but it can save them (in B3D). So you can always reanimate those Chars. Not so bad since the animations in Darkmatter 1 are not really useful anyway. "Walking" is probably the best of them, but I even decided to reanimate it too. "Attack" is just a bad joke imho.
you have the choice to animate it hierarchy-based, without the use of bones. This way you can save yourself the work of skin binding. Or you can create a skeleton and bind the skin of the chars to it and then animate the bones. It only depends on the selection in the keyframer tool: select a mesh and animate it or select a bone and animate it.
The DM Chars are created for hierarchical animations and thus they are still looking pretty good without bones.

BTW - no idea why they appear to be distorted in CFX. Maybe a matter of scaling.

@martonic



MilkShape3D only imports .3ds static meshs only!! No animations!! I talked with mete about this and this is what his explained to me! The .3ds model format.. as far as animations are concerned here, are composed of seperate .3ds model files that make up the model's animations! I have other software I tried.. And when I went to export the model as a .3ds model, I ended up with a folder of sevral .3ds models in it! All thoes .3ds models that where exported in that folder where all the animations!! I finally found out that the .3ds model format wasn't a good model type to work with. You would be much better off ofcourse... Working with the .b3d model format instead!! But I do understand your interest here though! You would like to load the .3ds model into milkshape3D, and then export the model and all animations to the .b3d format for Blitz!! Don't know much about CharacterFX, But Milkshape3D doesn't import animations for the .3ds format.. Sorry!! Only static mesh's...

Thanks.

I imported one of the animated DarkMatter 3ds models (H-Babe-Move.3ds) into CFX and immediately exported it to b3d. The result was static, distorted and lacking its textures.

There seems to be no easy answer and it looks like 3d Studio Max - which I don't have - would be mighty useful.

I'm concerned about the distortions in CFX.

Any advice on how to animate these characters with "less hassle" - short of spending Hundreds on Studio Max - I know Flash animation and am OK programming Blitz3d but I am no artist. I hope for tools that are semi "wysiwyg" as I cannot visualize from distorted media - one thing that really impresses me is the flattened faces and things I see for "skins" - I have _no_ clue how anyone could paint such a thing as I can hardly paint a tree with crayons...

Thanks for any further advice.