Max -> Panda animation problem

Pipeline
1

I have a problem with importing animations from max:

I did an in place walk cycle for my character to use in an adventure style game we’re doing. Importing the animation works well, except for the problem: My character is carrying an infant around on his arm and the animation works perfectly well in max, but when i export to panda, the baby doesn’t follow the animation, but stays in one place (relative to the character), leaving the effect of the character throwing the baby around, which wasn’t quite what I was going for.

The character is animated with Character Studio and the baby attached as a prop.

To elaborate a little on other things i’ve tried:
I tried importing the baby as a separate object and attached it to his forearm joint, and then the baby follows the movement of his arms - but only when the animation is running. When he is standing still (different model, as the walk cycle is in-place) it doesn’t seem to work. And furthermore, when I run the anim with the baby attached to a joint, it seems to update between loops starting with the baby in a 0,0,0 position relative to the character, leaving the effect of him kicking the baby around…

I have a feeling this is some sort of import problem, but am stuck trying to fix it.

I’m not a very experienced panda-user, but I’ve got a programmer on my side that can help if it gets too techincal for me to handle. Can anyone help me remove all this accidental violence against babies from the game?

regards

DD

2

I think you’re probably experiencing multiple problems. So let’s solve one at a time.

The first thing you need to know is that panda+max only supports one kind of animation: bones + mesh + skin modifier (or equivalently, bones + mesh + physique modifier, but many features of physique are not supported). What that means is that to get the baby to move, the baby has to have at least one bone, and you have to apply a skin modifier to it.

In max, click Create/System/Bones, and then draw a line in the viewport. It creates two bones (one at each end of the line). In fact, you can then delete the end-bone, and just leave a single knobby-looking bone all by itself. You can skin the whole rigid model to that bone.

PS. Character studio bipeds work fine as bones.

3

Ok, I sort of figured that the prop in biped would serve as a bone for the object, but I definetely will try what your are describing.

Thx for the quick reply. :slight_smile: