So, I’ve got my exporter sending models, diffuse maps and normal maps out from Houdini to Panda, and I’m unbelievably excited.
Now, I’d like to try and get rigging and animation data exported as well. Unfortunely, I’m having a lot of trouble finding threads here on the forums where people are trying to do this in Python, and I can’t seem to get starting in the reference. Am I missing something?
Can someone point me to where I should look for this or, better yet, explain how to do it?
Thanks!!
Are you generating egg files? Have you seen the eggSyntax.txt document referenced in the manual? This document does describe the nitty-gritty details of the required output format.
Actually converting animation tables successfully usually starts with several missteps. I believe pro-rsoft’s collada thread talks about some of the missteps he encountered in that converter, and some of the solutions and research attempts.
David
Found that thread and bookmarked it, thanks. I am trying to take geometry data that I have access to in Houdini and export it to an egg file directly from Houdini.
From your reply I take it that I will have to do everything by hand from here on out? I’ve just been using the very nice methods and classes that come in the Python part of Panda so far. I’m okay with trying to do it by hand, but are there any useful methods or classes I should know about before I dive in?
Also, I can’t find an ASCII-based egg file that has the information I’m looking for in the samples. It would be amazingly helpful to have an example to work off of. Sorry for the extreme newbie question, but is there any way I can convert the binary files included with Panda to ASCII, or else find some examples of animated skeletal models online somewhere?
Thanks a bunch!
You can convert the .egg.pz file that come with the samples to .egg using panda’s “punzip” utility.
You can find animated skeletal models there, too. For example, in the Boxing Robots or the Roaming Ralph sample.
I don’t recommend writing to the.egg format directly (unless you’re already doing this), but use Panda’s Egg### classes instead. More information is in the reference and in sample code on the forums.
panda3d.org/apiref.php?page=EggData