WIP Fixing the dotXSI 3.0 Exporter for 3ds Max...

[Archangel35757]

...A custom NPC you can arrange the bones however you want but rearranging the biped I'm almost certain will keep it from working the way it was meant to.

As I have been saying all along-- this would be for new aliens & creatures... and NOT for the humanoid JK biped.

[Tempust85]

If you want the creatures torso to pitch/yaw while looking, then you must keep to the coded bone names & angles. If you don't care, then you can have any names and angles.

 

With the amount of different GLAs in DF2 mod, I'm thinking I should try and move some of this hard-coded stuff into a new dat file or something for the artist to specify.

[Archangel35757]

@@DT85 - Or since we have the source code it could be fixed as you say where the artist specifies those angles for the NPC, etc.

[minilogoguy18]

Can you give a list of the orientations, I may not have the spine bones oriented correctly.

[Archangel35757]

Can you give a list of the orientations, I may not have the spine bones oriented correctly.

Are you asking a@@DT85 a question?  Because I'm not sure what you are talking about?  If you are referring to Gorc... @@Psyk0Sith and I chatted quite a bit today and he chatted with you as well.  Given you have already rigged Gorc in Softimage, and modified the skeleton to be more JKA compatible, and started animating-- your Null Skeleton rig is the master now.  @@Psyk0Sith is modifying his CS Biped to match your Null Helpers.

[minilogoguy18]

Yeah, I didn't think about the spine until just now.

 

Your confusing terms, the null skeleton is just that, you guys don't have my actual rig.

 

I need to know if I need to change the local transforms of any of the bones in the spine to make the character look and bend over properly when the crosshairs are aimed at the floor.

 

I'm using a shadow rig, the nulls are just a game skeleton that accepts the plotted fcurves on export. There is a another skeleton laid over that with full IK and controls that the nulls are bound to. I wouldn't export an actual SI skeleton, the IK chain heirarchy doesn't match up with the simple FK parent/child chains that JA uses. This is why I said using the CS biped as your actual bones is dumb and using it as a shadow rig would let you add controllers to the CS biped if you wanted.

 

I'm still not interested in using any JA base animations, there is enough recycled content around, don't need any more, I want to actually make something.

[Psyk0Sith]

Personally, i'm fine with new animations, in the early stages i wanted to have something to fall back on in case no one volunteered to complete the task. Now it's more of an experimentation to see how i (or anyone else interested) could simplify the process of creating diverse humanoids.

 

Using the biped would be a time saver for max users if done correctly, in case it fails it can be used to drive the nulls, no big deal, but if i have the choice to skip that step i'm all for it.

[Archangel35757]

If you want the creatures torso to pitch/yaw while looking, then you must keep to the coded bone names & angles. If you don't care, then you can have any names and angles.

 

With the amount of different GLAs in DF2 mod, I'm thinking I should try and move some of this hard-coded stuff into a new dat file or something for the artist to specify.

 

Is there any existing file that could be easily be appended and not break backwards compatibility?  Like adding these torso yaw/pitch angles in the existing animation config (like a header section)?  @@eezstreet any thoughts,suggestions about this?

[Archangel35757]

minilogoguy18, on 21 Jan 2017 - 9:25 PM, said:

...I'm using a shadow rig, the nulls are just a game skeleton that accepts the plotted fcurves on export. There is a another skeleton laid over that with full IK and controls that the nulls are bound to. I wouldn't export an actual SI skeleton, the IK chain heirarchy doesn't match up with the simple FK parent/child chains that JA uses. This is why I said using the CS biped as your actual bones is dumb and using it as a shadow rig would let you add controllers to the CS biped if you wanted.

 

I'm still not interested in using any JA base animations, there is enough recycled content around, don't need any more, I want to actually make something.

 

Yes, I know how to rig, and I know what a shadow rig is, and a C.G. Root Rig, etc.  Dumb?!  I don't appreciate your condescending attitude... 

 

...and I am intimately familiar with the SI Templates that get generated, how they get generated, and exported in and by the 3ds Max dotXSI 3.0 exporter-- and they compile perfectly fine in Carcass v2.2.  Currently the animations get baked, plotted onto the Dummy (Null) helpers; and currently the CS Biped does not get exported.  Yesterday, @@Psyk0Sith and I did some experimentations, on exporting the CS Biped directly to which he skinned Gorc.  I am quite able to "plot" the CS Biped bone transform data into the SI Templates and write that onto the Nulls-- if I needed to make any code changes.  But In fact it already works... I just need to tweak the exporter code so that position data gets plotted onto the Pelvis, so that the root Biped node (Bip01) can be ignored during an "Export-Selected" job.

 

Why do this?  Because many people are not riggers.  @@Psyk0Sith asked if this was possible?  And I said yes, it is possible... I believe the tests he and I did yesterday have proven the concept.  He was able to rename the CS Biped bones to the game bone names as well as re-parent/re-structure some of the bone relationships within the CS Biped.  He said it exported fine and the retargeted BIP animation played fine.  So, why force an artist like himself to learn rigging (yes, I know it is easy for you and you do it in your sleep...) when he is quite comfortable using CS Biped (which is capable of creating both FK/IK and Reactor/MassFX simulations)?  CS Biped and CAT are sufficient tools for animating (I don't care to argue their merits or shortcomings with you).  And you CAN add new controllers to a CS Biped and even augment it with Max Bones-- and you can skin to them to!  ...The only potential issue would be the matter of the torso pitch/yaw hard-coded angles @@DT85 mentioned earlier.

 

If it required a lot of re-working of the exporter code, I'd say forget it... but if it can work with only changes to a few lines of code, then I see no harm it making this an option for some artists.  If in the end this idea works, I see no reason to put it down-- as it might be preferred by novice artists wanting to create new NPC creatures and aliens.  As they say... there's always more than 1 way to skin a CAT (or CS Biped).

[Tempust85]

Use the animation source XSI files as a reference for bone angles, much easier.

[Archangel35757]

I've compiled the version 1.9 dotXSI 3.0 exporter for 3ds Max 2018 (requested by @@Rooxon). It should be submitted for release this Friday. People should only upgrade to 2018 after reading about the changes from 2017-- for example... the Mental Ray and iRay renderers are no longer an inherent part of 3ds Max in 2018... you will have to buy them from nVidia as a plugin now.

[Archangel35757]

I recompiled the plugin for 3ds Max versions:2018, 2019, and 2020... to fix the internal 3ds Max version number reported in the dotXSI ascii file.  I also recompiled the source code for 3ds Max 2021 (but it has not been tested yet in Max 2021-- so I would not uninstall Max 2020 before verifying all features of the plugin work in 2021).  Cheers!