Suggest Skinning/Animation software

[Roland]

Hi

 

I need some advice for getting some skinning/animation software.

I'm using Modo and it works great for creating Leadwerks content.

BUT! (there is always a but ), Modo has no skinning/IK animation

support, so I need to make those things in some other application.

 

Modo both reads and writes Collada and FBX files (and OBJ of course)

and I guess that will be OK for most other applications.

 

I can not afford and high price software so it has to be something

at max 300$.

 

I'm not interested in suggestions on replacing Modo by 3DSMax, Maya etc

of same reason ( the price ).

 

So If anyone have a suggestion on something that would work nicely with

Leadwerks ( Collada or FBX import/export ) I would appreciate it.

[Rick]

I would love to know also.

[Niosop]

Well, if free is in your price range, I really enjoy working w/ Blender (even through I have access to Maya and 3dsMax). It's bone heat skinning system is really nice, you can set up IK animations w/ constraints and it will export to Collada and FBX. Its controls take a little getting used to, but once you do get used to them you'll find you can be VERY productive (single key shortcuts for most things, one hand always on keyboard, other on mouse). It will import BVH files if you want to use MoCap data. It has a nice IPO curve editor. Its major drawback is it won't import FBX, so it's pretty much impossible to get animated models back into Blender, but it will import static meshes and export animated ones just fine. And since it is also a modeler, if you notice some little thing you want to tweak while you're skinning your model you can do it w/o having to jump back to Modo, make the change, then re-export/import.

[Rick]

Niosop, was there any tutorials that helped you learn animation via Blender? I have Blender and I almost fell out of my chair the first time I opened it up because the interface is insanely complex. It almost feels to overwhelming.

[Niosop]

I'm sure there are but I wouldn't know what they are. Usually I just googled or youtubed for a specific topic I was working on and followed along with those. Actually that's a good idea for another tutorial, a basic Blender->LeadWerks workflow. What things would people like to see? This is my typical workflow:

 

Base mesh in blender, export as obj

Import into ZBrush, subdivide, sculpt and polypaint. Export high poly version and the diffuse texture.

Bring high poly version back into blender and retopologize, unwrap and animate. Save as .blend file and export to FBX and OBJ.

Use xNormal to create normalmap, transfer diffuse and optionally create AO map from the high poly and low poly ones.

Convert FBX to GMF and bring into LWE.

 

I won't make a ZBrush tutorial as there's tons of them out there by people who are WAY better with it than me. But any of the blender or xNormal stuff I'd be glad to record tutorials for. What do you guys need? I figure it's best to give tutorials on free stuff because then everyone can use them, where as not everyone could use a 3ds Max->LWE tutorial since it costs so damn much.

[Rick]

I think the animation part would be huge. The biggest thing this community lacks is animators and if I could learn to animate on my own I'd be willing to buy more character models that aren't animated because then at least I know I could get some form of animation out of them, even if it's crappy.

[Pixel Perfect]

Take a look at Fragmotion, I find it's a great little package for rigging and animating and is a very reasonable price.

[Rick]

Pixel Perfect, have you imported a model into Fragmotion, animated it, then exported and used in LE before? I personally don't mind paying $50 for this if someone has animated their models using it and had them work in LE before.

[Marleys Ghost]

Niosop, was there any tutorials that helped you learn animation via Blender? I have Blender and I almost fell out of my chair the first time I opened it up because the interface is insanely complex. It almost feels to overwhelming.

 

 

 

I can sympathise with that but the new one is nicer looking.. just as overwhelming but now its all in new places but it is a good tool, just whished they'd make it a bit more intuative to use.

[Niosop]

K, I'll make a quick and dirty obj->add bones->set weights->animate->export->import tutorial. I'll do a better one later, but it should be enough to give you a general idea.

[Rick]

Sweet, thank you!

[Canardia]

Actually the old Blender interface was far easier than of any other modeller.

 

I tried parallelly to create the same objects in Blender, 3DSMax, Maya, etc..., and with Blender it was far easiest: just spacebar + create + shape (like cube), and with tab you switch between object and vertex modelling. That's basically all you need to create 3D models (and all the ad-hoc related and needed functions can be found by pressing spacebar).

 

It's a shame that they ruined Blender with the 2.50 release, as now it's as uncomfortable to use as the other modellers out there. But I heard you can switch back to the old interface too, but I haven't found out yet how.

[Niosop]

I agree about the 2.5 alpha's, I like the old interface. But supposedly pretty much EVERYTHING can be mapped to a key so I'm sure they'll have an "old-school" keyboard layout available. But yeah, it's so much quicker, to hit g,x,3,enter and move something 3 units along the X axis. s,y,-1,enter to mirror something along the Y axis, etc. Whenever I try and use another modeling program now I get frustrated because you have to click on so many buttons and look through so many menus to do what you want.

[Pixel Perfect]

Pixel Perfect, have you imported a model into Fragmotion, animated it, then exported and used in LE before? I personally don't mind paying $50 for this if someone has animated their models using it and had them work in LE before.

Yes.

 

Milkshape has a good rep for animating too. I have a copy but I can't say I've ever used it for animation. I'd have used blender too but I found it too dificult to get into although I know its capable of great things!

[Canardia]

I have MilkShape too, but I find it much harder to use than Blender. I never figured out how to place vertices accurately and how to create faces between them. In Blender I just hit the F key when I have vertices selected and it creates a face between them.

[Niosop]

Here's the tutorial. It kind of sucks, I recorded a better version right before it but my browser crashed and it was lost Anyways, as I was making it I was thinking I could make an entire series of these documenting all the required steps for making a simple game in LeadWerks. Project setup, modeling a base character, high resolution sculpting and painting, retopologizing, baking textures, creating normal maps, creating DDS textures and the pros and cons of different DDS compressions, modifying shaders, making materials, animating, Lua scripting, C++ code, level design, AI, etc, etc. Basically document the whole creation of a game with at least one example of each element. I might have two alternate version of certain parts, a free tools only version and a version using the tools I normally use (Blender vs ZBrush for sculpting/painting). I use mostly free tools anyways, so pretty much anyone could follow along w/o having to spend money on tools.

 

Do you think there is a demand for this? It seems the average LeadWerks user is a little more savvy than the average Unity user (mainly because of the price difference I think) so they may already know most of this stuff. Also, do you think anyone would pay for them? It would be a fair amount of work to put together, so I would like to make something off of it. There's people here who are WAY better at each individual portion of creating a game than I am, but I'm in a pretty good position as far as having at least a halfway decent grasp of every step of the process from content creation through code.

 

If you think people would pay for it, what would be an acceptable price point for say 20 or so hours of video? Anyways, just an idea, here's the link, LOL. http://www.screentoaster.com/watch/stVENWQURIR19bQFlfX1xYUVRS

[Roland]

Hi again.

 

First I really want to thank all of you for the suggestions.

After have read the posts it seems to me that Blender is the way to go.

I have no problem with the Blender interface, its just another program.

 

While looking at Blender's animation I came across the MHX format that

Makehuman (a free program that creates humans) produces. There is a

plugin for blender that accepts MakeHuman models including BHV motions

directly. Havent tested that yet, but if it works that would really

be something.

 

Blender

 

MakeHuman

 

MXH export/import for Blender

 

Thanks for the video 'Niosop'.

[Rick]

Niosop, thank you so much for the tutorial video. That was really helpful. I'm excited to test my new knowledge out!

[Marleys Ghost]

Here's the tutorial. It kind of sucks...

 

 

Is this the tute you thought was "crappy"? as I have just watched it and it certainly isn't thanks for that, really very useful

[Chiblue]

Niosop, thanks what an awesome tutorial, clear, concise and amazingly helpful.. I used to do commercial archictural work in 3DS Max, about 10 years back (version 2.5) when I started looking at game development, I was going to use my 3DS Max (paid for in full $3,500)... But it will not run on Vista or Win 7, so I contact Autodesk and I was told upgrade oh and by the way the upgrade will be $1,500... Nice!

 

So I have been looking for an animation and modeling tool that was inexpensive (given the fun aspect of this endeavor, not to mention the Wife.. )..

 

Anyway I looked at Truespace, not much luck with that and if you think the blender interface is complex, try truespace, and the bones system is very tricky to use...

 

So I found blender, love the interface and the tools, but was struggling to get bones to attach to the mesh, now with your help.... got it immediately.. and I now have my animated character...

 

So thanks for the tutorial and effort you put into it...

[Niosop]

No problem, glad it was useful to someone. It's such an amazing program, I often find out it can do something I was using an expensive program for before, and Blender often does it better. I'll be posting a retopology tutorial sometime soon, it's really good at that as well.

[Chiblue]

One thing I struggle with is all the key shortcuts... do you have a written up page or so of all the most used ones, I found several online but they are all 10-12 pages and what would be cool given you experience is the shortcuts you find the most useful to remember... the Alt-B was a great hint.... did not kow about that... and man does it help..

[Chiblue]

As a side not, I have not tried this yet for LE Editor, so what is the best method to get models and animation from blender into Editor, or in the LE Engine, I did not see a GMF export option on blender?

[Niosop]

Export to FBX then use ConvertMesh.exe or fbx2gmf.exe to convert.

[Roland]

I followed the Tutorial and yes it works nicely.

Then I made a test with MakeHuman and BHV animations.

 

I created a male human with MakeHuman and imported

the human into Blender. Then I imported a BHV animation

and attached it to the imported human. Exported the result

to FBX and it works nicely in Leadwerks. Here is the result.

 

http://vimeo.com/9041943