[ThomasEgi]

since there are always people asking for certain "how to get X from blender into panda" i decided to start with creating video-tutorials.

here's the first one:
Baking normalmaps from highpoly to lowpoly models and export.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7CkxQYRl1w

[Update]
Animate your characters and export them correctly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bz9lfHk2dPg

Tags and Dummy's.. as you requested.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw5DxESx_1Q

feel free to request more.
i thought about re-doing my "lightmaps" tut.
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rig: dell inspiron 1720; ubuntu 9.10_64 ;panda 1.7.0
may a catgirl be with you. nyaan nyan~~ ^.^

[lethe]

Very nice, I like the text bubbles. I shall add a link to that video to Chickens manual, and any further once you produce:-)

Animation would be a very good idea to cover though - a lot of people get stuck with that one it would seem.

[ThomasEgi]

feel free to link. i'll think about animations then.
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rig: dell inspiron 1720; ubuntu 9.10_64 ;panda 1.7.0
may a catgirl be with you. nyaan nyan~~ ^.^

[SuperPete]

Its a good tut, but I got lost at the end .. erm and the begining. but thats nothing todo with your video ^_^ just need to work with Blender a but more and then come back.

Might I sugeest a video showing how to add tags such as the infamous "**/start_point", thats the sort of things I'm looking around for atm anyway ^_^

Keep up the great work.
Nyaaa ^_^

P.S could I have a link to your wallpaper in that video ^_^ ?
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Robots! Nyan Nyan Nyaa ^_^ | My start_point blender tutorial

[ThomasEgi]

http://www.haruhi.in.th/home/space.php?uid=258&do=album&picid=827 colorgradient was done using default gnome wallpaper functions
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rig: dell inspiron 1720; ubuntu 9.10_64 ;panda 1.7.0
may a catgirl be with you. nyaan nyan~~ ^.^

[SuperPete]

Thank you very, very much ^_^ you may go back on topic ^_*
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Robots! Nyan Nyan Nyaa ^_^ | My start_point blender tutorial

[baskyn]

Could you make a tutorial of how to export animations from blender and import them into panda to where you can run like roaming ralph? i tried and it said it couldnt load "models/world" when i didnt do anything with that part of the code

[ThomasEgi]

if you get a couldnt load model error you are missing files or you used wrong file names. be sure to double-check if all egg files for geometry and animation are existant and have correct pathes.
i have animation tutorial on my to-do. though i might have to wait till end of the month when my exams are over
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rig: dell inspiron 1720; ubuntu 9.10_64 ;panda 1.7.0
may a catgirl be with you. nyaan nyan~~ ^.^

[ThomasEgi]

after many requests i (almost) proudly present:
Blender2Panda: Animation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bz9lfHk2dPg

creating an ultra-low-poly character with armatures , a simple animation and get it into panda:)
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rig: dell inspiron 1720; ubuntu 9.10_64 ;panda 1.7.0
may a catgirl be with you. nyaan nyan~~ ^.^

[lethe]

Very nice - I shall add a link to that to the Chicken manual:-)

[FenrirWolf]

Very nice tutorial, thanks Thomas!

One small thing you might want to point out: When it came to painting the bone weights, you can use the W special menu to create a vertex group from that bone's heat. It's almost always not correct and needs hand-tweaking, but it saves a little bit of time.

[GrizzLyCRO]

Great, i planned to do some video tutorials on same topics quitesome time ago, but collegge got me, and forgot about that totally..

I plan to do this tutorials.
if i dont write it down, they will never be done..

1. Make character with makehuman, export it, and opet it with blender.
2. Reduce number of faces on that character
3.Texture
4. Making of armature
5. and finally animating

I would like to request something a bit more complicated.
It is not only about pipeline, its more about panda3d
Export mesh (preferably human character from makehuman) with chicken, and program (in panda3d) which can control shape of mesh.

To give you more details, here is what i am planning to do.
Make several meshes, few males and females of every race (yes, its probably going to be goblins and orcs and elves, but in a bit more modern world).
And then I would use one mesh, but many modified versions of it.
Like 100 human male type A NPCs, but each would look a bit different.
So game would load mesh and textures, and then load and apply these "Deformations".

This would also be really cool showoff of engine.
I am having in mind something like Character Creation ediotr in Oblivion (yes, i know, game sucks, but i played it only because that detailed editor got me)

So virtually i would like to have an editor for these meshes (i am not asking for one, i just want example of how to do this)

1. Video howing how to modify model in blender (vertex groups or some other approach if ti exists) and export it.
2. Program to control mesh in realtime
2.0 #Well documented please
2.1. For example to control lips or eyes or anything, i need to see how to do it
2.2 OPTIONAL Save-Load of Deformations (variations)

Here is video of Oblivions one editor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Orqyj03zVfs

If this is too complex (i think it is, but i also think i am not only one who would gain much from this) and anyone isnt interested in doing this, could i please get some pointers to get me started.
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Where there

[ThomasEgi]

your request requires the integration of shape-keys in chicken. i think that's partially in already. but afaik you have to wait for it until blender 2.5 is released and chicken is rewritten to run on the new api.

and it is indeed a bit long for a single tutorial.
how to use blender is not part of my tutorials. they assume you know how to do things like creating more complex animation
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rig: dell inspiron 1720; ubuntu 9.10_64 ;panda 1.7.0
may a catgirl be with you. nyaan nyan~~ ^.^

[GrizzLyCRO]

Well it was worth a shot..
I thought this may be achieved by using vertex groups, but shape keys sure are a better way to go
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Where there

[ice_rock]

nice tuts u made..now id like to know to know too what superpete wants to suggest, how to add tags like the "**/start_point".. hope you'd do our request..

keep it up!
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Im Cute

[ThomasEgi]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw5DxESx_1Q
your whish has been granted
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rig: dell inspiron 1720; ubuntu 9.10_64 ;panda 1.7.0
may a catgirl be with you. nyaan nyan~~ ^.^

[clcheung]

[ice_rock]

wow very nice tutorial.. now i know how to do it.. thank you thank you very much!! you helped alot!!

keep it up!!
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Im Cute

[yipeee]

Hi guys,

Noobie question, but its driving me nuts, I can't seem to get a simple blender animation to export. For some reason I can't get the Animation list menu item to appear in the Chicken export panel. All that shows up is the Status list, which says No Apparent Problems when I select my armature and item. So all I end up exporting is the model.

Anybody have any idea what I'm doing wrong? I've added keyframes and can play them back in blender, the chicken export just doesn't seem to detect that.

I'm using Chicken R81 and Blender 2.49b. Thanks!

[ThomasEgi]

please watch the video tutorial about animations carefully.
most common problems with armatures are:
-you used "parenting" instead of the "armature modifier"
-you use envelopes for weight-asignment (this usualy throws a warning in chicken)
so if i had to guess. you'r propably not using the armature modifier but parented mesh and armature. if you follow the instructions in the video it should work just fine.
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rig: dell inspiron 1720; ubuntu 9.10_64 ;panda 1.7.0
may a catgirl be with you. nyaan nyan~~ ^.^

[yipeee]

Thanks for the reply Thomas. I was indeed using parenting. I fixed that and am now using armature modifiers.

Finally got it to work. Thanks!

[GrizzLyCRO]

Parenting should work.
Or?

Anyway, it works for me, i use parenting and Blender automatically adds Armature modifier to object, i just need to click Make Real to export it correctly.
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Where there

[lethe]

Just for clarification the 'make real' button simply converts a parent-based armature into a modifier-based armature - its not that parenting works for you, its just that you are applying the armature the old fashioned way (parenting) and then using a helper button that converts you to the more modern way (modifier), which is the only way that Chicken supports. I'ld be very surprised if the ability to parent an armature survived in Blender for the transition to 2.50 anyway.

[Sim001]

Hi All,

Apologies for going over ground that seems to have already been covered, but I'm really stuck! I've spent my three day weekend trying to figure out why my (very basic) animation won't export to .egg format using Chicken R91. I've followed Thomasegi's vid tutorial on how to do this (nice vid btw Thomas!), and I'm certain I'm going through all the right motions but alas I still cannot get my model to animate in pview.

So here's what I'm doing :

-Create basic mesh
-Create corresponding armature
-Add armature modifier
-Use weight paint mode to assign armature to mesh
-Create animation in pose mode
-Launch chicken
-Deselect 'Single File'
-Click 'Add Animation' (I keep the defaults here - my animation is only 5 frames)
-Click pview
-Click Export

If I launch pview this way, I get absolutely nothing, besides a line saying 'no animation' (the model isn't displayed). If however, I run pview from the command line after the export takes place, and pass the newly created .egg file as a parameter, I can at least the the model. There is no animation though (and pushing 'a' doesn't help). I've also ensured Envelopes are not being used.

Again, apologies as I'm sure you guys have dealt with this many times before, but I've been searching for the reason as to why this won't work for a while, and I'm totally stumped! Any advice would be massively appreciated!

Probably should also mention I'm a blender noob and this is my first forum post ever!

Thanks in advance!

[ThomasEgi]

sounds like all your steps are basically correct.
can you provide the blend file in question so we can search the error there?
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rig: dell inspiron 1720; ubuntu 9.10_64 ;panda 1.7.0
may a catgirl be with you. nyaan nyan~~ ^.^

[Sim001]

Thanks for getting back to me. I've uploaded my file here :

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=QA39W317

As the description says, this is a very basic model with an even more simplified animation! I created this to troubleshoot the aforementioned issue.

Cheers.

[ThomasEgi]

i'm tried with r71b and r91 ... the model exports fine in both versions (although you have envelopes enabled in the armature modifier which throws a warning,nothing serious). even single-file options works. maybe your blender/chicken install is missing something.
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rig: dell inspiron 1720; ubuntu 9.10_64 ;panda 1.7.0
may a catgirl be with you. nyaan nyan~~ ^.^

[Sim001]

Thanks for trying it out. I'll look closely at the blender/chicken config. In the meantime, can anyone point me in the direction of a .blend file that did export from blender with animation in tact (and perhaps the associated .egg files) ? This may be useful for further troubleshooting. Thanks again.

[Sim001]

I've managed to sort it! It turns out my animations were being exported, only to the directory above the folder where the model was being exported! I don't know why Chicken is behaving in this way, but as long as I'm getting my model and my animations exported I'm happy! Thanks again for your help ThomasEgi - I've learned alot from your tutorials!

[ThomasEgi]

hm. it should not export the animation to a seperate directory. maybe you have some strange directory names? in any case you might want to report it on the official chicken thread. so we can fix it.
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rig: dell inspiron 1720; ubuntu 9.10_64 ;panda 1.7.0
may a catgirl be with you. nyaan nyan~~ ^.^