Hello all

I am new to 3dcanvas & find it great to work with. I have searched old entries on this forum & followed tutorials to try & find what i am doing wrong. I am trying to export an animated .x frame hierarchy & it wont do it. It will export the object but no animation. I have tryed opening the animated .x file in 3dcanvas & it is still only the object with no animation. Can anyone help?

You haven't mantioned if it's a single object..ie a figure or a group of objects.
It could be the hierarchy that is incorrect.
Also is it a boned animation.

This is what you need to do....
1) Right click on the parent object or bone
2) From the component menu choose Select Hierarchy.
3) Right click the parent object again an choose Export Selection.
4) Choose Export DirctX Frame Hierarchy.
5) You will be asked if you wish to save the Root Group animation.
6) Depending on which 3D engine you are going to import the model into the answer could be yes or no.
For Blitz 3D it's No but you need to check this out...try both methods.

If the animation still doesn't export the hierarchy is incorrect.

Bazza

I am trying to export the simple tip animation on the single object. I am exporting it for use in Gamestudios whitch suports .x animated objects. I have just tryied exporting it with & without the Root Group animation & still no animation.

OK...can you try something really simple like this just as a test...
Drop a cube onto a new scene.
Set up a 60 frame animation
Move the cube along it's X or Z axis for the first 30 frames.
Then move it back to it's start point for the last 30 frames.

Export using the DirectX frame hierarchy option and see if this loads into Gamestudios.
If it does the export is working ok.

Bazza

3D Canvas doesn't import X animation, so importing it back into 3D Canvas doesn't really show that the animation is not being exported.

Can you send me the X file produced to support@amabilis.com? I can have a look to see if the animation is being exported correctly. Having the original 3DC file would be helpful too.

the best way to get your model into 3dgs is to save the x file and inport from milkshape then export using the mdl5 export..this will usually work good if it doesn't the try exporting from milkshape in ascii format..hope this helps..it would be real nice if 3d canvas would export to .mdl

Thanks people for your help.
I have just tried Bazza's sugestion. it exported 4 frames out of the 60 & still no animation.

Have sent the files to the Ambilis Support & see what happens.

Thanks for your advice Pirate, but i dont have Milkshape. Think i may have to get it. Has anyone had any problems exporting .MD2 files & useing them in Gamestudios. I tried doing it, the animated model worked but the uv map came through all stuffed up. I can import the .bmp texture but in the skin editor the uv map is unusable & appears as dots at the top of the skin editor. Has anyone encountered this before?

I've done a couple of tests with a Mech Warrior I'm working on...

I created a 40 frame walk anim and loaded it into Blitz3D, Fragmotion and Ultimate Unwrap 3D.

In Blitz3D it loaded and ran perfectly.

Fragmotion only loaded 8 of the 40 frames.

Ultimate Unwrap loaded and played all the frames but the figure didn't animate.

I'm not sure what the problem is here, I'll do some more tests, but the .x export from 3DC seems be working Ok or it wouldn't run in Blitz.

Could someone test a .x anim exported from 3DC in DBpro to see if that works ok.

Bazza

I have just downloaded milkshape & been playing around with that. It would only alow me to export as a .x file that worked fine, but it won't import .x files. I also imported the .md2 file into it & it had no animation. Could someone please email me a animated .x file & i will test it on Gamestudios & see if the problem is with my version. You can email me at Robiehogg@hotmail.com
Thanks heaps for the help people

I've sent you the animated 3DC and .x file for the Mech Warrior test I did.

Bazza

Thanyou for that Bazza.

I have just sent you a reply Via Email.

The help is vey much appreciated.