Usings Verold's 3ds max exporter - animation not working - verold

If I export the max project as an .FBX it will work (HERE - the pedal depresses ok), but then I loose turbo smooth (wheel alloys) and line objects (cables) disappear (why is that btw?). Using the Verold exporter, the animation asset appears in the 'key frame animation' tab in the 'choose asset' section, but when applied it never actually animates. And yet, if I animate a simple box next to the pedal, that works (HERE).
Partial solution: It seems the problem for Verold was that the pedal's parts were grouped, it works if they are attached instead. –

To clarify, it sounds like there are three issues:
Your TurboSmooth modifier is not being applied when exporting to FBX
Your line objects are not rendering
Your animation is not playing correctly, when exported by Verold Publisher
To apply TurboSmooth when exporting to FBX, please see the following:
http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/23085/3ds-max-fbx-turbosmooth-export.html
Note that line objects are not currently supported in Verold Studio, so they will not render.
Regarding animation, when I look at your first example, I see an animated pedal. In your second example, I see an animated box. Should there be additional animated objects in either example?

Related

Unreal Engine 5.1 Retargeted Animation From Manny to Mixamo Model Causes Single Animation Sequence To Rotate 90*

I apologize if this has been asked before. I tried searching for this first and nothing is coming up. I'm pretty new to Unreal Engine 5.1 so this might be something I'm doing as well.
I've been exploring animation retargeting in unreal and have tried following the steps we learned in class using one of the models from mixamo.com. Everything appears to work fine at the start and I can get the actual IK and IKR objects working just fine. However when I try to export the animations either from the IKR object or by right clicking the ABP object for the source mesh one and only one of the animation sequences rotates 90*. It is always the same animation (the Land animation sequence) and I'm not sure how to go about fixing it.
Also tried looking on google and turned up nothing.
I'm hoping this is some stupid newb mistake that is easy to fix or maybe there's something I'm overlooking. Any help is greatly appreciated and I will continue trying to fix the problem myself as well and will post if I fix it
Tried retargeting using the following steps
Create an IK_Object for the model you wish to project your animations on with chains for each. Mine looked like the following
IK_Remy
Repeat step 1 for the model you wish to source animations from. Mine looked like the following
IK_Manny
Create an IKR_Object Linking the two together, here's what mine looked like
IKR_Remy
Find the ABP for your source model, right click, and select "Retarget Animation Assets->Duplicate and Retarget Animation Assets". Here's what I'm selecting for that
Retarget Dialog
When I do the following most of the animation sequences for "Manny" export just fine. However the "Land" animation flips for some reason (see image below)
Exported Animation Images
Even stranger, when I preview the MM_Land animation in my IKR object it looks fine i.e. not rotated. However, if I try to export the animation from the IKR object the same thing happens i.e. it rotates 90*. I would expect this to be a case of WYSIWYG where if it's working in the preview it would export correctly. However that apparently is not the case
Also I tried modifying the animation sequence manually but it won't let me. If I try to rotate the model in the animation sequence and save it, once I close the sequence it's re-rotated and the changes do not persist.
I can export the sequence as a new sequence, modify it, and save it, and then rename it as my exported "Land" animation to hard force it and it at least looks normal. However when I actually play the game and jump, when the land animation it still flips sideways and in addition causes the character to scale and warp for a second which makes me think there's something going on here that I don't know enough to fix. Really hoping someone with more experience in Unreal Engine can help.
EDIT: Fixed Image Descriptions
I can confirm that this is an issue - I'm seeing the same behaviour. I haven't managed to fix it yet, but my suspicion is that it's due to scaling - in my instance, I have had to scale up my custom character by around 2.5 times to replicate the scale of the default mannequin. Did you scale your custom character at all?

Render don't start in blender while using Cycles

I just appended two blender files to get my two models in one scene. when I hit Render Image. It doesn't start rendering although before appending the two files the render was working properly. I tried to render the default scene(Cube scene) in blender and it rendered. I guess the problem is not with my camera because I created a new camera and made it my active camera and still not working. all the objects appear in the viewport shading and none of them are hidden.
one more thing the GPU compute option is no longer active besides it was active before and worked with me.
I just figured out the problem. the sequencer in the output properties was checked on. to check it off go to Output Properties > Post Processing > Sequencer.
I'd just like to add my solution which bugged my mind an hour ago:
Blender has two options for rendering, which confused me at first, and might confuse others as well.
Render -> View Render will view the previous rendered image. However, if you've just opened Blender, then there's no previously rendered image of your viewport.
In order to render the viewport, you'll have to tap Render -> Render Image first. Then at a later stage you can do Render -> View Render to view that image.
I guess the same works for animations as well, first you'll need to do Render -> Render Animation to render your animation, then later do Render -> View Animation.
Encountered the same problem. Disabling the sequencer, as OP mentioned, didn't do anything. For me the problem was in the output path for animation; in Output Properties > Output.
My destination folder was moved (it was a very old project) and Blender seems to have no problem with rendering images to a folder that does not exist. However this is not the case with animation. I imagine that when rendering animation, blender uses the target folder to store rendered frames and when everything is rendered, takes the frames and makes the animation.
I do not have any insight into how blender works nor do I have experience with programming so take this as an uneducated guess.
;TLDR:
Check your destination folder, blender seems to be fine with rendering images to non existent folders. This is not the case with animations.

Blender .fbx -> Spark AR Studio scaling issue for skeleton animations

I'm trying to create a character with skeleton animation in Blender to bring into Spark AR Studio. In Spark I want to use the baked animation. The .fbx brings the model and skeleton into Spark's scene just fine, until a new animation controller is selected via the object's inspector window and the animation is selected for use.
At that point, the Empty object named "Armature" is scaled to 100 instead of 1 and cannot be changed.
As a workaround, the Skeleton child object named "skeleton" can be scaled to 0.01. In Blender, I tried changing the scene's units and made sure the object's scales were all applied. Nothing is scaled to 100, everything is scaled to 1.
Since the object from the .fbx imports into Spark with correct scaling, I expect the animation to maintain that, but once the animation is selected the scale jumps from 1 to 100.
Put you animated object inside some nullObject and then scale down not animated but nullObject. Hope it is clear.

updating camera helper projection matrix (three.js)

I'm switching a camera between two exported dummies from 3dsmax by setting it to use their matrixWorld properties.
camera_foreground.matrixWorld = (dummy_shot1.matrixWorld);
camera_foreground.updateProjectionMatrix();
This works great but the camera_helper that I've created doesn't inherit the matrix changes.
It doesn't allow me to run updateProjectionMatrix() on the helper itself. I've tried parenting the helper to the original camera. I've also tried to set the helper.matrixWorld to the same dummy_shot1.matrixWorld. What would be the best way to get the helper to update along with the camera it's created for/from?
You can update the frustum of a camera helper with THREE.CameraHelper.update().
Given two cameras: camera1 and camera2, you can switch the CameraHelper transformation from camera1 to camera2 like this :
cameraHelper.camera = camera2;
cameraHelper.matrix = camera2.matrixWorld;
cameraHelper.update();
Note
Another solution that seems more convenient for you, would be to create one THREE.CameraHelper for each camera and switch the currently displayed helper with :
camera1.helper.visible = false;
camera2.helper.visible = true;
In addition, THREE.Layers can also be used to control the currently displayed helper.
3dsmax cameras/camera animation aren't supported by the 3dsmax collada exporter. To get around this I was exporting dummies (from max to threejs) that had been parented to said cameras. I had worried that the dummies would come through without their animation (since the parents (3dsmax cameras) are ignored).
The dummies were coming through fine (I'd thought) since camera location/rotation worked fine when copying matrixes to three.js cameras. The problem arose when trying to get the helpers to do the same (apparent when viewing the scene via a debug camera).
It seems camera_helper objects in three.js don't play nicely with the matrix of these particular dummies (probably because in 3dsmax they are inherting from a parent). What's strange is that the cameras (as mentioned above) work fine.
To get around the issue I used a great maxscript (http://www.breidt.net/scripts/mb_collapse.mcr) to copy/bake all the parent keyframe data from the 3dsmax camera to it's dummy (no longer inheriting). The collada friendly dummy was then exported to three.js where both the camera and it's helper work great with.
Thanks Neeh for help and questions. It was rebuilding a test scene to upload that I noticed the new dummies (not parented to cameras) worked fine with helpers.

Cube won't render BLENDER

I am using blender to make a character, but every time I add a mesh cube, it won't render. I've done several attempts to make it work, but it just won't. I'm sure I'm not the only one with this problem.
If you can see it in the 3d viewer but not in the render, check in the list in the Outliner where you have all your objects and see if the little camera is clicked on.
if you can't see it in the 3d viewer but you have the point try to scale using S