3dsmax MDX Exporter - Supports Animations

well 4d5e6f as you said above you have only 1 bone
try a animation with a little bone chain and you will see the problem wir the animation
as far as I can guess it seems like the pivots are displaced
its like the chain uses only the pivot of the mainparent ore something like that

C U Ced

Mjukland, if the animations don't work in 3ds max, how do you expect them to work in game? My script doesn't import animations properly so it won't be exported properly.

I found the a part of the reason for the problem with the animation
a scaling or rotation on the y axis is converted to a scaling or rotation on the x axis
so y->x->z->y if I follow this rule the animation works
for the test I only used singel bones
I use 3ds max 5.0 german edition
but i don't think that could be the problem

I attached the mdx file that shows the problem
the armes are supposed to go up and down
and the head should only scale up and down
but the armes go forward while the other goes backward
and the head scales to the sides

at the moment I only have a little time to test the script
but the next time I'll test the animation of chains
at the moment I believe that a bone in a chain uses the pivot of the mainbone but I haven't tested that enough yet.

please contact me if you can help me with that problem on [email protected]

C U Ced

I dont understand you problem/suggestion (or whatever it is) Cedalvin. Plz explain it better :////
and 4d, how many max frames is enough? Is 1,000,000,000 ok?

Im getting when im trying to export a model.
It says
--Unknown Property:"model_name" in undefined

I have typed the model name in the field.
Im using 4.2

i think that would be enough frames.

if anybody gets that error, run the script again and then export
i dont know why this happens, and when i try to fix it, i get different errors. ill work on fixing it though

it worked when i reruned the script like you said, i tried that before but sometimes it works sometimes i dont.

All I need to do now is conjure up $4000 out of midair so I can buy 3dsmax to use it =/

no matter what i do, i get this

>> MAXScript Rollout Handler Exception: -- Unknown property: "model_name" in undefined <<

can you help me?

Utilities>MAXScript>Run Script>MDXExport.mse
try exporting again after that

hi
well the I fixed the problem with the axis so far
the rotarion is correct if the bone is created in the left view

but after this part works the next problem with bonechains remains
bones that are animated with rotation, seem to rotate around the pivot of the mainbone (the bone all other bones are linked to) and not their own

a possible solution is not to link them and move and rotate every singel bone in the normal chain manually
but this is a lot work and the animation looks terrible

in mdx files from blizzard most of the animation is made by helpers which IMHO shows that they used invers kinematik

repub : what could be the problem with animating bonechains ?
and can your script export ik ?

C U Ced

that is good to know Ced, but i can think of no way to get the exporter to fix that part. it is mainly up to the modeler to add extra bones when linking over a longer distance as there doesnt seem to be a good way to change that. if you look at the blizz models, you will see the odd arrangement of the bones, and bone linking seems mainly to connect smaller bones and to deal with helpers
as to IK, it probably wont work, unless war3 supports it (seems very unlikely) - you should still be able to export a model, but the animations will be flawed (this conclusion is based on my limited understanding of how ik animation works with bones and such)

it exported and animations are listed BUT IT DOESN'T ANIMATE!

there might be a few problems:
1. you didnt change the frame rate in 3dsmax
2. you didnt animate with bones
3. you didnt use the skin modifier

btw, plz read the readme, as all of these problems as well as the one you posted earlier are addressed in it.