Exporting/Importing Animated Model from Blender to LE 3.1 Steam

[Arinthian]

Hello,

 

for a couple of days I've been trying to figure out how to import an animated cube I created from blender into Leadwerks 3.1 Steam Edition (I'm using a cube as the simplest test so I can figure it out and work from there), but unfortunately, nothing I do seems to work

 

I've created animations using armatures, and without, fiddling with export options, looked online at blender animation tutorials, etc. and nothing I do shows the animations up in the leadwerks model editor/viewer when they do get imported.

 

I'm very much a novice when it comes to blender and modeling in general, so it may be something obvious I missed, but I have no idea what to do or try and this point, so hopefully someone here can help me.

 

I've attached the latest blender model/file I've been using, so if anyone can check it out and let me know what's up, I'd be very grateful.

 

Blender File: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15394871/boxtest.blend

[Arinthian]

Well. I figured it out. Seems it needs a material applied in LE with the animated model shader... something tells me I should have known that...

[gamecreator]

Good job. To me, some of these material/shader needs are a bit unclear.

[Arinthian]

Yea, I think in this particular case it can be very confusing, imagine say an artist, or someone new to game development in general, may be unfamiliar with shaders in general and could run into serious headaches trying to figure why their animated models aren't showing the animations.

 

Once I get a couple more things figured out, I should have a crack at making a tutorial or something...

[cassius]

I load all character models in by code, I only place background objects like props in the editor, objects that don.t have to be referenced.

 

Or have I misunderstood what this post is about?

[Rick]

@cassius He's saying that when you import an animated model into Leadwerks 3.1 you have to make sure the materials you use on it have a certain animated shader or else it won't animate.

[cassius]

I see. I don't have 3.1 yet.

[YouGroove]

@Rick : I just tested, if you import some animated model, even without shader and texture, it will animate in game by code without any problem.

 

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The test model is very strange , it's a cube with one bone and it's not real animation, it's just a bone scaling that scales the cube. I would say avoid bone scaling for characters, not good for 3D engines export in general.

[Arinthian]

I couldn't get it to animate with code until I added the material with the correct shader myself.

 

I kept it a cube with a single bone to try and keep it simple, there also should be three actions there, a location, a rotation and a scaling animation, I've noticed that scaling animations don't seem to import at all, so I'll avoid that in future.