I got the DAE from the Steve on request. But if I can work with the X that's fine. I can see the animations and their timings are appropriate (for example, if i just imported the fbx lots of animations - like GenWalk - have time of 5.9s, while the actual animation takes under 2 seconds).
So I import the X and... I just try to export it in fbx format. But fragmotion crashes. What am I missing? (sorry to bother you nice folks so much, but this is getting me frustrated and I can't wait to get over this and have code problems once again)

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I forgot to mention, upon importing in fragmotion I do get a ton of "Invalid texture path" messages. Should I care about that? - I assumed I'd just get the model white and set those manually later.

I feel your pain ... no application quite ever seems to handle the importing and exporting of model file formats quite the same and many have issues. I find fragmotion better than most for handling X files but UU3D Pro best for the majority of other formats.

I have generally used the b3d export with single track animations and then split those up within Esenthel itself. I don't think b3d supports multi-track animations though.

I guess you are going to have to experiment and find a pipeline that works for you, this is what most people end up having to do as it differs so much depending on the source of the material.

Well I went for fragmotion since it was free.
Can esenthel 2.0 split animations? Or just limit the length of an animation? In the editor; I know it can do it dynamically but I wouldn't complicate myself with that too.

Yes, right click on a animation file and choose "reload" .. from there you are able to set start and end frames.
To split animations, just duplicate the animation file in the editor then reload and set the frames.

-edit:
Well, on their webpage under supported export formats it says 'partial' for fbx.. this might explain the crash. Try to export to .x or .b3d or even .dae instead.

Oh gez. Well that's great, really big thanks, I can finally use the models I paid for! )
I've been using this engine for about about 5 months now and I had no idea I could do that. I feel a little silly, but... at least it's solved now. Huge thanks guys, I really appreciate all your help

That's great, and I'm happy to help but let's not rejoice too quickly, you may have won the battle but the war isn't over yet

Pixel summed up a lot of the issues and inconsistencies, but by un-optimized this texture is a shining example of what I had in mind:
   

So by un-optimised you just mean big? and, this just regards the textures? Because I'm ok with that, I want to change whatever textures I can with my own anyway.

And while this is still hot, another question. Another arteria model, the SnowWolf. No matter what format I import, the animations are horribly mutilated. That's probably not the right word, but you know what I mean. I imported them in fragmotion and they were working fine there; but after exporting them back out again, I still got them mutilated. What could cause that one?

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Also, if I may ask you kind people one more thing to be able to work in peace for at least 2 weeks... when I have a model with several parts, what's the easiest way to divide them into other models? (I use Blender and, since 2 hours ago, fragmotion - I'm bad with both).

Pretty much what I can do toggling Esenthel's VISIBLE tool, but I want to actually get separated objects out of my model. Like Artera's base character. (you have a guy holding a sword in his hand; I'd like to get the sword and the guy as two separate objects)

(08-24-2013 11:23 AM)AndrewBGS Wrote:  Also, if I may ask you kind people one more thing to be able to work in peace for at least 2 weeks... when I have a model with several parts, what's the easiest way to divide them into other models? (I use Blender and, since 2 hours ago, fragmotion - I'm bad with both).

Pretty much what I can do toggling Esenthel's VISIBLE tool, but I want to actually get separated objects out of my model. Like Artera's base character. (you have a guy holding a sword in his hand; I'd like to get the sword and the guy as two separate objects)

If they exist as separate groups (which they generally do in Steve's base models) then you can select all of the groups you don't want such that their meshes are highlighted and delete them, leaving just the mesh you are interested in. You will probably want to move it to a suitable position relative to the origin and then save as a separate model.

I can do this easily in UU3D but I'm guessing it should be easy in Blender too.

Nope, I can't get it. I'm starting to consider the possibility of me being dumb.

In what menu should I select them? I can't do anything at all in the GROUPS tool; I can't edit anything, I can't drag any enum in the top bar, I can't do anything at all.
With the VISIBLE tool I can just disable them, but I want them completely deleted.

So once again I don't know what I'm missing. (again, I'm in EE 2. Can I do what you explained in here?)

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Oh wait I'm getting somewhere. guess I didn't drag the enum in the right place, I should have dragged it on the mesh.... Wish it was written somewhere.
So I managed to create draw groups, but I can't seem to be able to delete the extra objects (thus splitting the many-objects model into some single object models, which is my goal). How can I delete them?

For Arteria -> Fragmotion, use the X format.

My workflow is import the X File to Fragmotion. Delete animations that I don't really care about initially. In other words, I just want base animations to start with. That is, the animations that EE handles by default. And yes...some of these animations I have to create (such as Idle/Stand). When I get a good Frag file with the mesh and animations I want, I export the mesh with no animations to ms3d. I then export a separate ms3d file for each animation.

Import the mesh file to EE. Import each animation file as an animation to the mesh file object.

I don't mind sharing my animation files (ms3d) for the standard Ateria biped if that will help. Keep in mind I am not a modeler or animator so I can't say my animations are the best....all I can say is that they do work in EE.

Oh. by the way. The reason you get an error on the FBX import to Frag is because Fragmotion does not support FBX 2012 and newer. Arteria FBX are 2012 format.

Thanks a lot for sharing your workflow with me, that was just what I needed!

I will try it tomorrow, I've enough trouble with animations for one day, I'm working on some more relaxing river creating right now, I needed a break. But I'll try it tomorrow and see what I can manage.

If you could give me an idle animation for an alteria model, I would really love that (indeed I was stunned when I noticed there wasn't any, and my character had to stay idle in the T-pose). Hopefully I won;t use it in the final project anyway, by thay time I hope my artist friend learns to make our own animations.

either way, thank you very much for the info, it was truly helpful. Damn I learned a lot today

There is an Idle animation it's just not called Idle! Its named 'NPCStanding_Free' (not the most helpful name I know).

Oh. Lovely. Thanks, I didn't find it aparently. I expected it to be in the GEN- animations, or called idle (since the horse one was called idle, I figure the non-horse one would be idle also). Thanks a lot!
Not just to remove the tons of extra meshes and the character is good to go!