Help required with animating a new character

Scripting Issues
1

Hello,
I am new to character animation in Panda3d. I am using a properly rigged character model and have made two animations, namely: ‘modelGeeky’ which is similar to ralph.egg and ‘modelGeekyanim’ which is a hand waving animation that I have substituted in place of ralph-run animation.

I have done following changes to Roaming Ralph example :
self.ralph = Actor(MYDIR+"/models/modelGeeky",
{“run”:MYDIR+"/models/modelGeekyanim"
})

The character is displayed perfectly at the start of the program but when I press the direction key to trigger the waving animation “modelGeekyanim” I get the following error:

:util(warning): Adjusting global clock’s real time by 1.85702 seconds.
:06-18-2008 00:13:55 Actor(warning): /c/Panda3D-1.3.2/samples/Feature-Tutorials–Roaming-Ralph/models/modelGeeky is not a character!
:util(warning): Adjusting global clock’s real time by -2.15526 seconds.
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “newCharac.py”, line 262, in ?
run()
File “C:\Panda3D-1.3.2\direct\src\showbase\ShowBase.py”, line 2028, in run
self.taskMgr.run()
File “C:\Panda3D-1.3.2\direct\src\task\Task.py”, line 839, in run
self.step()
File “C:\Panda3D-1.3.2\direct\src\task\Task.py”, line 787, in step
self.__stepThroughList(taskPriList)
File “C:\Panda3D-1.3.2\direct\src\task\Task.py”, line 721, in __stepThroughList
ret = self.__executeTask(task)
File “C:\Panda3D-1.3.2\direct\src\task\Task.py”, line 644, in __executeTask
ret = task(task)
File “newCharac.py”, line 193, in move
self.ralph.loop(“run”)
File “C:\Panda3D-1.3.2\direct\src\actor\Actor.py”, line 1119, in loop
for control in self.getAnimControls(animName, partName):
File “C:\Panda3D-1.3.2\direct\src\actor\Actor.py”, line 1318, in getAnimControls
animControl = self.__bindAnimToPart(animName, thisPart, lodName)
File “C:\Panda3D-1.3.2\direct\src\actor\Actor.py”, line 1638, in __bindAnimToPart
bundle = self.__partBundleDict[lodName][truePartName].node().getBundle()
KeyError: ‘lodRoot’

**** End of process output ****

I need to make the walk and run animations but first I need to get a simple animation working. Please guide me as to what I may be doing wrong or what I need to do to get the hand waving animation working.

Regards,
Dev.

2

from what software are you exporting the animation?

if it’s from max, i noticed that if you export just the animation don’t works,
but if you export model+animation it does…

I read that somewhere in the forum and my experience is the same

hope that helps
c

3

Thanks for the reply snaptothegrid.
I am exporting the model and animation separately from Maya.
Still have not been able to solve the problem:(

Regards,
Devang.

4

If you pview the model and the animation simultaneously, does the animation play? If it does not, something is wrong with the animation file.

David

5

Hello David,
Thanks again for replying :slight_smile:.
I checked your suggestion. It appears that there is indeed a problem with the animation file because the animation does not play in the pview even though the model is displayed . However if I export both: the model and the animation together in one egg file then it plays the animation properly. I guess this will be a bit heavy but I think it should be workable.

Thank u once again.

Regards,
Dev.