Animation using obj format from Blender

Pipeline
1

This works in Blender 2.49 and may work in 2.5.

I export my animation using the obj export. The export breaks down the animation into a series of obj files. The files can be converted to egg and bam(for faster loading) then use the sequence function to run the animation (that was solved for me in a reply to a question posted here).

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was some way to sequence animation to a single file animation?

2

It’s not a bad idea though…at least we will solve the vertex animation supporting problem…I wish this will be carried out

3

I just tried this on Blender 2.54 and the obj exporter doesn’t seem to work.

I found a link for the obj export/import problem:

blendernation.com/2010/09/12 … -released/

I tried this and it exports static image. The animation portion doesn’t seem to work.

4

You can create a sequence animation within a single egg file, using the syntax (as described in the manual). However, you’d have to construct this egg file by hand (or write a program to do it), since the obj2egg won’t do it for you automatically.

David

5

That’s interesting.
Would there be a big performance loss? Comparing, say a 1k sequence mesh with 100 “poses”, with a 1k skinned mesh with 10 bones and 20 key frames?

6

It depends. It’s just a different tradeoff. With a sequence animation, you’re prebaking the animation into a series of poses. There is less CPU requirement to play it back, but more memory consumption.

Whether this results in a net gain or loss depends on how your application is already consuming resources.

David

7

In my opinion this will be too much memory usage.

8

I’m not sure how it’s a matter of opinion. It should be a measurable matter of fact: in a given environment, either it is too much memory usage, or it is not.

David

9

Sorry this reply is so late after the initial questions but there is a solution to this, although the .obj specification doesnt support animations natively, by simply augmenting it with a seperate .anm file you can get brilliant albeit boneless animations.

Have a look at:- sanguinelabs.co.uk/expose/pr … d=wastudio

This provides a very easy to use “animation maker” as well as the open-source model library (for OpenGL).

Note: It was developed as the obj file format is widely used yet difficult to animate… just as you stated.