nemyax
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Posts posted by nemyax
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Trying to tackle bone and CP weight export. Not much luck so far, but it should be ready soon.
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Cropping the bulges off Robert's single "undistorted" image will give you more accurate and flexible results than stitching multiple images together.
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But there's no RCHolmen subdirectory =\
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ToreB
Would you be interested enough in animation interchange between A:M and Blender to test it (when the time comes)?
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Hooks are good for detail reduction and flow management, but they aren't strictly required for making an animatable character. If you use Blender to model for A:M, then create a nice mesh as you normally would (using box or extrusion modelling techniques), keep the valency of your poles under six, and finally use the remesher that comes with the exporter. The model should be good to go, even without hooks.
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Update 0.1.20150715
The handling of bad geometry has been improved. You can now get wild with your topology. (Well, somewhat wilder than before, anyway.)
The addon now exports only the active object (in Blender parlance, that's the object that was selected last). Previously it wrote all visible objects, but A:M seems to load only the first object in the MDL file and ignore the rest. If there is a need for multi-model export, I can add a batch export command. But so far everyone's been OK with single-object export.
Incidentally, this makes me wonder: does anyone besides me have any practical interest in the tool? My long-term goal is to enable the use of A:M for animating Blender assets and import of the resulting animation back into Blender. I'd like to implement it through conversion of A:M actions (realistically, only the directly-keyed transforms in them) to Blender actions. I'm going to pursue that direction, but is anyone else on board or am I alone in this?
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Update 0.1.20150713
Well-formed geometry should be exported correctly now, both with and without tails.
I'm still getting trouble with export of bizarre topologies, such as wire edges. This little bastard has consistently caused bad things to happen (infinite loop in Blender with Add tails turned on and invalid geometry in A:M with Add tails turned off):
If you remove the wires, everything is in order.
So until I work out what exactly is happening in such cases, please keep your meshes tidy =)
In other news, I've got a new subscription thanks to the awesomeness of this community, so the show goes on. Next up: bones and skin weights (no schedule for that yet, though).
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Try the new update please. It's a blind fix again, but I did my best.
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Thanks, Malo. Looking into it.
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The add-on has been updated. Tails are now optional, and the Animation:Master Middleman script has been incorporated and has a (very modest) UI.
The zip file with the old version is still available just in case. Please test and tell me how it goes.
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Regarding hooks: it's entirely possible to mark the edges in Blender that you want to "carry" hooks. For example, a sequence of "Freestyle" edges could be interpreted as a single spline that hooks connect to. The tricky part, besides implementing the conversion, is to tell valid topologies from invalid ones. Otherwise, the exporter would generate naive geometry that A:M won't accept, whereas anything goes in Blender.
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Uf you say, that UV export is supported, I will try again.
It should be, but getting it to work was a PITA, and it may still fail in many cases.
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Unfortunate there is no export of the UV coordinates (Stamps in AM).
No UV export where? OBJ?
a 5pointer with hooks on all sides comes to mind.
But if that is doable? Neymax would have to answer this.
There's no support for hooks in this exporter. And a 5-pointer with hooks everywhere doesn't seem like an advisable configuration in A:M.
With A:M's approach to platt projection I wonder if multiple UVs couldn't be assigned to the same locationA:M's multiple stamps per patch are for all intents and purposes multiple UV layouts. Blender supports those, so there's a reasonably direct mapping. However, Malo and I didn't dig that deep.
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I'll post an update some time next week then.
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If the whiskers/danglers/tails are a problem, I can add an option to automatically remove them. But you'll have to do the testing, folks, because my subscription has expired.
I didn't use Blender for anything except as the conduit to convert the OBJ file via Nemyax's plugin. I don't want folks to think I can actually find my way around Blender.
You sound like you're ashamed of something.
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Pixar Subdiv being (at present) mostly of the former while A:M's approach primarily of the latter.
It looks like OpenSubdiv 3.0 can represent A:M patches with Gregory patches.
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it would be a nice addition to have a rock-solid and option-riddled FBX export for animation in particular (I'd even be happy with a good, industry-standard-based BVH export)
An alternative would be a standalone application that converts A:M files to those formats. But that's also problematic, because the source formats can change without notice.
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I assume you aren't familiar with modeling in a Choreography
I am, but that's only a workaround: you still have two separate objects and you can't box-select.
Edit: Here's a demo: youtube.com/watch?v=XQsrIcEtzpc
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My gut feel is that if A:M Users focused more on what A:M uniquely brings to the table we'd see features appear that would be hard to match in any other application.
3DAce is interesting in that respect. Without being a spline modeller, it provides all the basic splining techniques of A:M (except hooks and five-pointers):
- Cage drawing (similar to the add point tool)
- Generating triangles and quads (unlike A:M, it's only semi-automatic)
- Fusing points by right-clicking during a drag
- Connecting edges one by one (as in the add point tool's split-me-slowly mode)
- Running a new loop through an edge ring (a plugin in A:M)
- Cutting through edges (again, a plugin)
- Removing a loop
And it also offers good interactive symmetry and edge/face selection, both of which would also fit in with A:M's toolset.
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I have seen some pretty amazing modeling come out of AM...but I've also heard the people say stuff like "I've been working on this for a few hours every day for the last couple of months". That is terrifying! I can see the same level of detail and quality in "polygon based" modelers and I hear stuff like "Something I did over the weekend seeing as the wife and kids were visiting grandparents". So...MONTHS, vs. a couple of days. 'Nuff said, really.
I've had exactly the same experience. It happens with every decent-looking WIP in A:M.
I have seen some really creative modeling tools (usually Japanese-made)
Which Japanese tools do you mean? I've played with hamaPatch and 3DAce. Both are neat, if basic. There's also Metasequoia, which is rather bland. Are there any others?
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it would be nice to load cad files directly and support sat, iges, 3dm
Maybe they still don't because of the risk of different spline function implementations introducing discrepancies. Whereas with triangles there's only one way you can interpret the data. But maybe not—just thinking out loud.
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Rodney
What you quoted deals with offline rendering, not with real-time GPU-accelerated rendering in the viewport.
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I don't see what a SDS preview would help. Could you explain why you'd like that?
In the absence of easy interchange, it wouldn't help much indeed. But if A:M were to be used as the animation part of a pipeline (and this topic shows there really is a need for that), it would be the right thing to have.
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There is a polygon preview, but no subdivision surface preview. That would be a handy addition.
HamaPatch can display any of the three: patches, polygons and subdivision surfaces.
Default patch mode:
Polygons:
Patches as polygons:
SDS as polygons:
Smooth SDS:
Of course, HamaPatch had it a bit easier, because it didn't have hooks. But hook support doesn't look like a showstopper.
MDL exporter for Blender
in 3rd Party Programs, Utilities and Products
Posted
Heiner
If the one trick works, the other should also work. How heavy is the model you're working with? Did you try cutting everything and pasting it back? Saving and reopening?
Anyway, weights are already exported correctly, but bone transforms still come out wrong.