I have two models, one male human, another female human, both exported from 3dsmax, both rigged to use fairly standard bipeds.
Now, the female model is a little smaller than the male, as is her biped.
I exported all the anims for the male biped.
If I tell the female model to use those anims, she, of course, becomes stretched and distorted.
So, is there any way to use the same animation on two differently sized biped models, and have it work on both without distortion?
Id there a way to tell panda to ignore the “scale” of the biped within the animation?
Can one “scale” animations in panda?
I had the idea that maybe I could create a dummy anim for the female model, and using blend make male anims play on her. I do get less stretching, but also less animation.
Is there a way to remove the hpr information from an animation file and just leave the xyz info? So that the blend would only adjust the resulting size of the biped, not the movements within the animation?
I am aware that I could “simply” export the animations from Max for the female, but would prefer not to have to re-export 250 or so animations, one at a time, for every biped size in the game. I will if I have to, but I would prefer not to.
From what I’ve read, there appears to be no batch animation exporting from max, other than as one huge file containing all the animations. It would be nice to have the option to export all the anims in one go, as I tend to get delirious after 70 or so, and start making elementary mistakes, overwriting already exported anims etc.
If your animations are made up only of rotations, and the hierarchy is the same, and the rig is made by parenting (not constraints), you should be able to use the same animation on both models with no stretching.
The problem then is the legs are not going to be matched with the ground unless they are the same length.
You could split your animations between upper and lower body, thereby limiting the number of unique animations needed for each model.
For this to work the rigs really do need to be close to identical, with the only main difference being the length of the bones.
Thanks teedee, based on your post, I think I have found a method that works.
I export the “donor” model, (and obviously its 250 anims).
I then import the donor into a new scene, to make a bone rig rather than the 3ds max biped I was using, and delete the donor model, (but not the bones).
Next I merge the desired model (female, or much bigger male, or whatever it is) into the scene, (just the model, no bones/biped/rig of any sort).
Now I adjust the “donor” bones to match the size I want, re-physique or skin the model to the bones and export.
I do then have to re-scale the new model to the correct size in-game, but thats minor compared to the potential utility of a shared animations.
I have to play with it a bit, but I wanted to say thank you very much, the panda project and community are wonderful. (Or “rock”, or whatever the young people say when they mean something is good…)