Archangel35757

@@eezstreet -- one of the questions I have is... how will you determine the amplitude of a given expression? For example, let's say I create a "joy" animation that goes from a neutral face to 100% expression of Joy. But what if you only want to stop at 25% or 50% and then blend to another expression? How will intermediate expressions be handled?

Having two bones in the corner of the mouth, in my opinion, will better keep the mouth from pinching-- while there may be only one control object that influences both of them... The nosetip bone I believe is there to correct/fix the nose tip if need be... we'll see. Put your finger on tip of your nose and pucker/purse your lips. Also try moving your mouth from side-to-side. The nose-tip does flex a little. Also, what is wrong with their bone placement? It seems pretty good to me... based on what I've been researching on facial expressions...

These markers represent all the facial bones in the JO skeleton : The gray markers represent the effectors ( _eff ) at the end of the eyebrows and lips' bone chains. I'm thinking of renaming those gray markers and use them as additional bones.

@@Psyk0Sith and @@DT85 -- when I go back to fix Max 6 thru Max 2011 plugins for the "filename spaces" issue... I'm thinking of making a couple of changes to carry thru all versions in their final compilation and release... ...which are: Rather than require the Material Editor name to be the relative path to the texture file. Implement an export option that specifies part of path to ignore and get the remaining texture path. @@DT85 -- Didn't you do something like this in the MD3 exporters? Add a code snippet to delete the empty file when the user aborts/cancels the export process from the Progress Bar.Can you guys think of any other desirable changes?

Hmm... why is the backside of the model so dark in your fixed image? I think the lit version of the backside of the player (Jan shown) is better... (but yeah, the rim lighting in your later post/pic needs tweaking).

Update: The 32-bit version of the 3ds Max 2013 dotXSI 3.0 Exporter (v1.8 Beta) has been submitted to the Utilities section and it awaiting approval. 3ds Max 2013 is the last version to support 32-bit. In the coming months I will compile a version for 3ds Max 2015 x64. So I would recommend keeping your 2014 (or under...) version installed... If you're using these dotXSI plugins-- how about some reviews/ratings? Feedback is always welcome...

@@eezstreet -- yes, but the eyelids need to blink ( maybe they should be part of the face)... and the eyes must be separate from them for various expressions. I dont think the face needs to be as dense as shown in your post. I'll stay within the limits.

The eyes, eyelids, "mouth/mouth cavity", and tongue will be separate objects... the face will also be a separate object (from the head). We'll see how it goes.

Now that I have finished the 3ds Max 2013 dotXSI 3.0 exporter... I will be starting my facial rig to work in collaboration with your lipsync demo. If you don't mind... I will just use this thread to document my facial rig progress.

Just uploaded the 3dsMax 2013 x64 plugin to the Utilities section... I will upload the 32-bit version after @@AshuraDX verifies the 32-bit plugin is working properly.

Does this mean you're coming back to JK model creation?

I'm looking for one more 3dsMax 2013 32-bit beta tester... any takers?

@@DT85 -- Sent the fixed 64-bit exporter to you, Hiro, and @@Psyk0Sith... I also sent the latest 32-bit Max2013 version to @@AshuraDX to beta test... I compiled this new 32-bit version against a very old version of the XSIFTK that embeds the XSICore.lib and XSIFtk.lib directly into the plugin and thus no need for an XSIFtk.dll. I hope it works... Please post your results!

Hiro found a flaw in the 2013 exporter... I failed to catch scene nodes (objects) that have spaces in their name... it's an easy fix. Also @@AshuraDX said the2013 32-bit version causes Max to error & close after export. I think the reason is again incompatability with the older version of visual studio used to compile the XSIFTK.lib DLL. I think I have a solution in mind...

If you mean animating something like a cutscene then you will need to learn ICARUS scripting.

@@DT85 -- Thanks! I will try and compile a 32-bit version using the old Softimage XSIFTK (it has worked for all the previous versions-- maybe it will work for Max2013 as well). UPDATE: ( @@AshuraDX ) Ok... with a little setup, I was able to get the Max 2013 source code to compile against the legacy Softimage Win32 XSIFTK. I will email this to a couple of folks to beta test.

The dotXSI 3.0 exporter for 3dsMax 2013 is now fixed... exporting morph animations work. Filenames with spaces now are acceptable. Also, batch export has also been fixed. It should be good to go... will send to @@DT85 so he can check it out in 3ds Max 2014 and then I'll upload a beta version to the File > Utilities section. The only downside is that it won't be possible to compile a 32-bit version for 3ds Max 2013 and up. The last 32-bit version will be for 3dsMax 2012 (when I go back and recompile all the others). The problem is that the Crosswalk 2013 SDK was compiled using an earlier version of Visual Studio... whereas 3ds Max 2013 was compiled with VS 2010 SP1 and that was part of the reason for my crashes... and Crosswalk 2014 is only for 64-bit. I will try to compile a 2015 version soon. But that's the end of the road I'm afraid... Autodesk has told me that Crosswalk will likely cease to be after v2015. We'll need @@Xycaleth to get his FBX converter fully functional for animations, etc. after that.

@@DT85 -- Standby...

I'm close to having it fixed. Single file export now appears to work properly... deleting the xsiparser object. However, I've broken batch export-- rather nastily. It appears to go thru all the "motions" and the log says everything was a success-- but no dotXSI files are actually written out... further it corrupts the Max files (greatly incteasing their size) and they will no longer open.

It would be nice to have a feature in the vehicle file that tells it what rider animations to play-- then you could make custom riding anims for custom vehicles... then these new rider animations should be added to the GLA-- not replace existing anims.

Well, it's not too brilliant-- rather a frustrated hack to stop the crashing-- but my bandaid fix (setting the pointer to NULL) results in a memory leak. So I need to keep looking for the root cause of the crashing...

Ok... I finally got it to stop crashing. So I'm sending the 3ds Max 2013 x64 dotXSI exporter for @@DT85 to test out... (I only verified it quickly with his SaberSlamDown animation). Anyone else who has 3ds Max 2013 x64 and wants to beta test it-- just send me a PM.

@@eezstreet / @@DT85 -- do you concur that we need to make a MOUTH group of bones-- so that lipsync viseme animations play on the MOUTH group while the facial expression animations play on the FACE group? Also, @@eezstreet, will your coding automatically blend between the changing visemes and facial expressions?

Update: Well, I have resolved the function that was causing the initial crashing. And the Max2013 exporter is now writing out the dotXSI 3.0 file... and the file seems complete (compared to Max2011) and the file does play in the XSI Viewer. However, it is now crashing somewhere in the code-- post-writing of the dotXSI file... so I still need to do more debugging.

I see your point, but I'm just thinking beyond your JK:Enhanced... This could be useful for future endeavors involving other species that used the humanoid skeleton: Malastarians, Ongree, Ithorians, etc.