Rookie: Skeleton animation comes uncoupled when exporting to osgb

[CARISMA]

Hello everyone, I apologize in advance if this is pathetically simple. This is the first experiment I've tried running in Vizard, so I'm a gross rookie.

I've used motion capture (Motive) to create an animation and paired it with an avatar (via Autodesk). In 3ds Max everything is working just fine: the character mesh moves along with the skeleton, no issues. However, when I export the .osgb and then call it in Vizard, the mesh appears as normal, but only the skeleton is animated. It rather alarmingly pulls through the avatar's mesh and does the animation routine on its own. Distressing.

I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong on my export that causes the skeleton to no longer be rigged to the mesh. I would deeply appreciate the help.

Thank you!

[Jeff]

Vizard supports character animation using Cal3D models. Take a look at the Cal3D tutorial for instructions on exporting to Cal3D from 3ds Max.

[Veleno]

The plugin Jeff is referring to can be found on our downloads/tools page: http://www.worldviz.com/virtual-reality-software-tools/

[raj]

Hi

Exporting character animation for the world viz is quite expensive in terms of time.
because we have to export animation with 3 different files through cal 3d to vizard.
so if there is any issue with models then every time we have to check all animation elements from starting.
in other side unity & unreal giving more flexible support for character rigging animation.

2. also is it possible to export blend shapes to vizard?

Thanx in advance

[Dhananjay]

Hi Jeff

If World viz support .FBX format (For joint based Animation) it would be great for all of us to work in this Engine. Right now it's very difficult to export character or any type of joint based animation in vizard. I have tried many times with different method to export animation but not satisfied with the result.
So my suggestion is please make it supportive in .FBX format. So we can export animation from Maya also.

Thanks
Dhananjay Kumar

[Veleno]

@Raj: It sure can be. Back when I was exporting the Complete Characters libraries to Cal3D, getting all 50 out with each of their animations was a big enough chore that I ended up modifying an old maxscript someone wrote to help me along.

It's somewhat buggy and hasn't been tested in the current version of Max, so isn't something that we'd put as part of a release or support in any meaningful way, but I've attached it if anyone would like to mess around with it or use it as a starting point for their own code.

As for blendshapes... Cal3D supports the export of morph targets, and follows the usual rule that requires them to have the same number of vertices. A morph target for a mesh is exported as a new mesh, then in the CFG file you write it like below.

Max 2016 and later seems to have a quirk that can mess with the vertex count upon export that we haven't found a solution for yet. It should still work correctly with versions earlier than 2016.

mesh = head.cmf
morph = head_happy.cmf
morph = head_sad.cmf
morph = head_angry.cmf

mesh = body.cmf
morph = body_muscular.cmf
morph = body_thin.cmf
morph = body_chubby.cmf

@Dhananjay: While I can't be specific about upcoming features, but it should be safe to tell you that we know the current export process for Cal3D is a headache to use (it's certainly given me a few) and we're working on a solution to the problem.