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

[Psyk0Sith]

The one question I have and would like to know... it seems that Assimilate also supports the 3ds Max native .ASE animation file format.  Has anyone attempted to compile a new animation using the .ASE format?  That would be huge as well, if we could get that to work... as another alternative to dotXSI.  I imagine you'd have to use the version of Carcass from JO as well.

 

I never tried .ase because i always assumed it was .XSI only, i'll have a look but i'm pretty sure it won't like it, seeing how bitchy it is simply using another .XSI file version.

[Archangel35757]

Hmm. I could write a simple Java program to combine the files. Or conversely, use a diff tool like kdiff.

I'm not sure what the best course of action is... if anything. I was just thinking of recompiling Assimilate to add ROOT as enumerated, to eliminate "BAD:ROOT" warning (meaning it's not listed in anims.h).

 

Edit: Also, some anim enumerated names have been recycled with all new/different animation... so that'd conflict with JO.

[Archangel35757]

I never tried .ase because i always assumed it was .XSI only, i'll have a look but i'm pretty sure it won't like it, seeing how bitchy it is simply using another .XSI file version.

Well, assimilate shows .ase file type. Maybe you have to build it with Assimilate?

[DT.]

It's carcass that needs to have ASE support and I *think* I remember seeing mention of ASE in the exe using notepad++.

 

Also, you could see how XSI is imported into assimilate for your importer plugin.

[Archangel35757]

It's carcass that needs to have ASE support and I *think* I remember seeing mention of ASE in the exe using notepad++.

 

Also, you could see how XSI is imported into assimilate for your importer plugin.

Wouldn't the corresponding version of Carcass.exe that goes with the ST:Voyager SDK already support .ASE since it's supported by that version of Assimilate???  I've not tried those versions-- or the version that came with SoF2???

[DT.]

Carcass wants a .ASK file, no Idea what it is.

[Archangel35757]

Carcass wants a .ASK file, no Idea what it is.

Is there a NO ASK switch?  Found this in code: TK_AS_CONVERTMDX_NOASK

 

$aseanimconvertmdx_noask

[DT.]

That's the command we use for converting from .XSI files. Without _noask it wants a .ASK file to convert from.

[Archangel35757]

That must be a holdover from the older game tools... maybe can find some info in ST:EF, ST:Voy, or SoF2 tools about a .ASK file???  Probably just running down a rabbit hole.

[DT.]

SoF2 uses Ghoul2

EF2 uses TIK

EF1 no idea.

 

A search says ASK is an alias skeleton.

[Archangel35757]

Alias you say???  I have demo's and learning editions of Alias Motionbuilder and Alias Studio on my 3D World magazine CD collection... let me load these up and check this .ASK format to see if they support it.

[Archangel35757]

@@DT85, @@Psyk0Sith -- Ok... so I have the skeleton compiling with Carcass and creating the .GLM/.GLA. Assimilate can separately write out the animation config files. When I check to make a G2 .skin file... it only generate a blank file.

 

I'm wondering where the .skin file failure occurs-- whether it's something missing or bad within the dotXSI file ( ...like texture paths??? We can have absolute, full paths or just the texture filename and extension ( ...the JKA files seem to be the latter type) ).

 

Any ideas??? :unsure:

[eezstreet]

Check Assimilate preferences. Is there an option that specifies a base path? If so, set this to where your "base" folder would be.

[Archangel35757]

Check Assimilate preferences. Is there an option that specifies a base path? If so, set this to where your "base" folder would be.

All of that is set correctly in Assimilate.  It generates the "model_default.skin" file-- however, it is empty ( 0 Kb ).  It doesn't write the content.  This is the mystery I'm trying to solve.

[eezstreet]

Perhaps it would be best if I understood the process a little bit better. What does Assimilate do, and what does carcass do? Why is the XSI version important?

As I understand, Assimilate is just a GUI front end for carcass, yes?

[Archangel35757]

@@eezstreet -- yes, Assimilate is a GUI that wraps carcass... and sets everything up for carcass via the model.car file. But it could be that carcass is looking for texture file information in the dotXSI files... or Assimilate prepares this information. I'm not sure what information is written to the binary .carpet file or which app creates it. This binary file is written to a folder called "ravenlocal" in my root C:\ drive.

[eezstreet]

Assimilate does it. They have a libxsi in the assimilate tool. We should be able to add support for more formats for Assimilate, but if I'm not mistaken, it's done up in MFC, so I'm not too sure on that.

 

EDIT: no it's not done up in MFC, it's just missing a few resources which I can scrounge together rather easily

[DT.]

.carpet file I believe is some sort of cache file which carcass checks with whenever recompiling a .GLA (that you've compiled before) to speed up the compile.

 

carcass writes out .SKIN files, but I usually get dud ones so assimilate probably sends carcass the texture info from the .XSI file. My best guess.

[eezstreet]

I've got Assimilate compiling and working. I'll put up a Github repository in a few with a fixed version of it.

Upon brief examination, it would appear that you can load pretty much any format with this provided you write your own checks in ReadASEHeader_Actual in Sequences.cpp. Were you looking to upgrade the XSI format used by Assimilate or make it use different formats entirely?

[Archangel35757]

Assimilate does it. They have a libxsi in the assimilate tool. We should be able to add support for more formats for Assimilate, but if I'm not mistaken, it's done up in MFC, so I'm not too sure on that.

 

EDIT: no it's not done up in MFC, it's just missing a few resources which I can scrounge together rather easily

I downloaded @@DT85 's Assimilate submission that fixed the automatic alphabetization of anim files... and I cleaned up 5 or so pre-existing warnings having to do with sign/unsigned mismatches... I.e., using int as For Loop counter and comparing it to vector .size() property. I fixed them by changing from int to size_t, etc.

 

I need to commit those changes to GitHub.

[Archangel35757]

@@eezstreet-- no, we don't want to mess with the dotXSI format. It would be nice to get the .ASE format working again.

[DT.]

Will make no difference in the end if assimilate can import different formats, you'll still need carcass's code. Carcass does the actual compiling, assimilate is just a GUI & animation.cfg/model.car generator.

[eezstreet]

Indeed. Adding support for Assimilate sounds like the best way imo.

How did you handle the missing resources? I just pulled mine out of the current Assimilate using Resource Hacker. Not sure what you used. Is there a public link to your repo?

[minilogoguy18]

It's a shame since all this work for dotXSI 3.x support wouldn't even be needed for max users or even other Autodesk products if Assimilate/Carcass could compile a newer dotXSI 6 file (Crosswalk).

[eezstreet]

Well I think dotXSI is a proprietary format, is it not?