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[Stucki]

Hello again.

i am sure there has been a similar topic before...

is it possible to create and animate the characters for wme completely in blender and is there a 100 % working exporter for this nice engine..
i want to hire some people on the blender forums for the creation of the characters. But i have to be sure it works perfectly before i do.
I found a publisher who wants to make chess-worlds with us and i want to sign the contract. But i cannot do the character job myself ...

So i have to be absolutly sure about it.
Does anybody use blender for the characters and how exactly does it work ??

greets stucki
 

[metamorphium]

AFAIK nobody was able to succesfully export an animation from blender. If you will be lucky to manage that, let us know how. There is a lot of people who want to use blender for the game creation and chracter / animation export is one of the key problems.

[Nihil]

I haven't heard/read of a working exporter, too so far. Is there any special reason for only using Blender? Because for 3d Studio Max and Maya and probably all other major programs there are working .x-exporters as far as I know.

[metamorphium]

nihil: a price...

[Stucki]

okay thanks for the answers ..... and yes its really the price thing with 3dsmax ...

is it possible to do all modelling and animating in blender and than export it to 3dsmax and than export it to wme or is that a hell of work to do ....?

[Mnemonic]

Perhaps it would be possible using the FBX format? Anyone knows if there's FBX exporter for Blender?

[Jerrot]

Speaking of pure modelling with Blender, it *does* work great using the Wavefront (.obj) exporter to transfer a mesh to 3dsmax.

This format *should* also work for the textured materials and uv-mapping (not tested).

It *definitely is not* capable of exporting bones/armatures and animations though. I tried a lot and none of the existing exporters was able to save my animated and rigged character successfully into any format that 3dsmax or other software could read without the loss of something.

So actually I only used Blender as pure mesh modeller for my character - and everything else had to happen in 3dsmax then.

[Nihil]

I don't see in how far this is a price thing unless you have to buy the software for your modeler first ... in that case I would search for someone else anyway :-)

FBX is not available for Blender as far as I know.

There are always some good character modellers offering their services at www.indiegamer.com in the art portfolio secion. Many of them target indie developers directly, so I guess their prices aren't too high.

[fireside]

Has the Ben Omari exporter been tested with Wintermute?
http://xoomer.alice.it/glabro1/index.html

[Nihil]

I think the last version I tried was that for Blender 2.40, but there is one for 2.41/42 now, don't know if that solved the problems?

[Mnemonic]

From what I've heard, Blender 2.44 should support FBX export.

[fireside]

Autodesk FBX  (Export Menu)
exports mesh objects and their texface textures, multiple uv layers, vertex color layers as well as materials, lights, and cameras. (animation related features are not yet supported).

Picked that up from their scripts list:
http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-244/python-scripts-and-api/

Hopefully they'll get animation going one of these days.  Luckily I've got a huge 2d sprite project going that will take me about a year at least.

[lostbear]

Hey

there are alternatives to blender if your having troubles. Blender is awesome and i use it, but its a pain getting data out of it sometimes into something else.

It should be possible to use these instead:

GMAX (often overlooked game tool the looks like 3ds max - Free!) i know it can export quake models etc, FBX shouldnt be a problem.

http://www.turbosquid.com/gmax

CaracterFX - Very cheap might be useful
http://www.insanesoftware.de/index.php?page=cfx/features.php

Milkshape - Supports Just about anything for caracters. http://chumbalum.swissquake.ch/

XSI Mod tool - http://softimage.com/community/xsi_mod_tool/default.aspx

hope this helps

[Mnemonic]

GMAX (often overlooked game tool the looks like 3ds max - Free!) i know it can export quake models etc, FBX shouldnt be a problem.

I'm afraid it is a problem. gmax is now discontinued and it was never meant to be a standalone free modeller, but a modding tool to be licensed by game developers. I guess there's no one to write a FBX exporter for gmax.

[fireside]

The XSI mod tool sounds interesting.  The site link is dead, but it's down loadable from downloads.com.  It shows a 2005 update though.  It also says it exports in SMD and some other format I'm not familiar with it, but Milkshape imports it and exports .X.  I'd rather just work with sprites, myself, at least for now.