Hello,

Does Esenthel have a way to "pin" a bone to a certain location (similair to IK), or does any teams have suggestions on how they use the animation editor in regards to simulating weight?

Example:

I am animating a cat sitting down/standing back up. In other tools, I have IK available to me. I can move the hips without worrying about the legs automatically moving with them and through the ground. They remain pinned in place on the ground where I placed them.

Is there a function in EE that lets me pin a joint to a location? So that even if a parent bone up the chain moves, it does not? There are circumstances where this is useful.

Thanks for any advice you have!

it's not available, I will add some simple IK to roadmap (in future)

While bad news, I thank you for the news. Deadend at the MayaCollada plugin, dead end with animation inside the EE tool, makes me a bit of a sad panda!

I confess to be a little dismayed. I love the engine, but it really looks like I have the wrong skill set to use it. I'll evaluate what its going to take/cost to learn Max and whether the current assets can be converted and make a decision on the engine's viability for our conversion then.

Again, thank you for your prompt answer!

but except the fact (in collada) that it messes up some bone rotations, don't animations play ok?
as long as the animations play ok, having some bones rotated shouldn't be a problem

Hi,

Thank you for your reply. I've been unsuccessful at getting animation assets into EE from Maya so far, hence my searching for an alternate way to get existing assets over.
It's a tad frustrating, for certain. I've seen that others have had similar experiences and have in the past used several different tools to get an animation asset into the engine

Example:

Post 15, Cmtanko

I have seen that dragonfly3 has recently announced success with Maya 2012 and its built in Collada exporter. I will give that a try.
I have no training in animation/rigging, so everything that I am doing is pretty much fumbling in the dark. Certainly, there are things I've done wrong with my rig - but I have no idea what.

I am a pretty darn good modeller/texturer however, and I am willing to trade a model or three of work for some handholding through the process of maya to esenthel!

I have spent the day getting to know the Character Animation Toolkit that comes with Max 2012. It looks promising, but does set ups created with this toolkit export into EE?

Thanks for your time,

Michael

---

UPDATE:

I have taken the trial version of Maya 2012 for a ride, testing to see if bones and animation export. I used the basic crab model, made a very simple bone for the arm, and then a simple animation.

There are a few oddities for me to figure out (probably joint orientation), but overall it worked. Animation imported correct direction and joints are where they are supposed to be

Further update:

Thank you Dragonfly3 for your update that maya 2012 works. The FBX_DAE export does indeed work, and work well for the basics. This was the big hurdle for me to get across and I'm over it. I am VERY appreciative.

Once I understand all of the ins and outs of this process, I will create maya tutorials for future users of the Esenthel Engine - they will come, as I won't stop talking about it!

I was able to import your crab animation using open collada successfully after changing "Body" controller name to something else because there was a bone with the name "body" already, as I mentioned to you in the PM about case sensitivity

which version of maya were you using? If it's 2012, yeah exporting will work and its great news My working maya copy is 2009 with an older version of openCollada. I'm already working on exports, including the crab. Good things await.

Thank you for your help

I was using 2011 with latest OpenCollada

Awesome, so we know that it works with at least 2011, which is good news.

Where did you get a recent version of OpenCollada? I'd like to pick them up. The last one that I can find from the OpenCollada open source site was the 2009 version.

Having a later version would be awesome!

http://www.esenthel.com/wiki/index.php?t..._Importing