Hey Everyone,
Anyone know how to export mesh animation from Maya to be imported into Prefab3D?
What format can hold mesh animation to be exported?
Is this even possible with Maya/Prefab3d?

Skeleton Animation is not an option. Thank you.

Cheers,
Peter Tucker

Md2 is the only input as official source.
Prefab allows you to import keyframe from any format within the VertexAnimator. They must have the exact same vertex amount, the file must hold only one mesh.
You can from there save your project, redit at will. export as as3 or md2.

If you provide me the file, I could look at a way to parse these files later on…

So in practice what would be the best way of getting VertexAnimation and a model into Prefab3d.

These are the steps I’ve experimented so far.
1. Bake Animation to Mesh.
2. Export to OBJ for my base model.
3. Export to FBX_DAE for my Animations.
4. Import OBJ into Prefab3d.
5. Click Vertex->Vertex Animation Editor.
6. Try to import FBX_DAE (See screenshot)
7. Nothing seems to be imported.
8. Press Apply.
9. Nothing seems to happen.

What would recommend for the best workflow/formats to get into prefab3d, (as it seems like I’m doing it incorrectly)?

Here is a link to my Maya file(Zipped) containing the model with baked vertice animation:
http://www.pen2pixels.com/Maya/BakedAnimation.ma.zip

Thank you for your time Fabrice.

Cheers,
Peter Tucker

If you have a skeleton animation, load and export as md2, Prefab will during the process convert skeleton to vertexanimations.
reload this md2, if you want to save as as3 or reedit the vertex animation.
As the translation is linear, you will probably have to tweak some part of the animation anyway.

You can indeed load the obj, select the mesh and open the editor. Or simply
start Prefab, open the editor and load frames.
but by frame here is ment keyframes. Means a mesh stored in an external file.
basically the same mesh in your editor with a modified geometry similar to previous keyframe. The file must have only one mesh. obj’s are easy for this. Dae should work too, but because it must have same construct order, same amount of vertices, you may not be able to load because its not exactly the expected amount. So you should stick to one format as parsers and exporters may differ in the way they order the data and the way they build it back.
Collada’s must be triangulated, as quads or face with more than 3 vertcies are unsupported. It also must be a 1.4.1. if you try to load an 1.5, Prefab will ignore it for now, as some nodenames and some stucture are not constant per vendor. I hope we’ll have better support for 1.5 later this year.
Prefab will probably show some warnings or traces to you if the file doesn’t meet the requirements anyway.

so to recap open prefab—> editor—> make a frame—> load file—> make new frame row, load file etc…

This is far from ideal, I know, I added this to at least allow vertex anim constructs from external files if you do not have the md2 anim export option in your editor. That’s al I have to offer for now…

Hmmm. I searched for an MD2 exporter for Maya 2013, and unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be any plugins for the format.

I thought exporting vertex animations might be a possible work around to a problem I’m having with Skeleton Animations. The real issue I’m having is whenever I export AWD2, when I import into prefab3d 2.14 all my animations seem to have an offset, i.e. playing from the center of the timeline. This in turn makes the ASD animations incorrect when I export to AS3 format. Not sure why my AWDs would have this strange animation offset.

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated! :D

Here is my maya skeleton animation file(Zipped) as well as my sequence.txt file:
http://www.pen2pixels.com/Maya/SkeletonAnimation.ma.zip
http://www.pen2pixels.com/Maya/sequences.txt

Thank you so much for your time Fabrice.

Cheers,
Peter

Look in past two days threads. I saw similar issue. You need to set your skeleton position so that they are same for each animation. I’m not familiar with this app, so I cannot really say much more.
What I do know is that Prefab will never change any of this, simply because there is no way for me to know if its intended or not.

May be once bones anims edit features will be added that will change the game… for now, working on an update that adresses lots of little issues, hope release it very soon.

sirpedroec I sent you an email couple of days ago.

From the tests Ive done.

You have to have a root bone thats always located at the origin.
So for your skeleton setup you would add a parent bone to what is your current root. That parent bone should have no weights.

http://away3d.com/forum/viewthread/3935/

Ive no idea why this is or if its a bug.
Its strange that the root bone will always return the origin
trace(JointPose(skeletonAnimator.globalPose.jointPoses[skeletonAnimator.skeleton.jointIndexFromName(“RootBone”)]).translation);

If Im wrong would love to know whats right.

This is your original with no bone parent.
http://www.shrewballooba.co.uk/anim/
Hold the U key. As the legs bend let go and you will see it sink down.

This is the same animation. All Ive done is reparented your Root_M to a bone thats located on the origin.
http://www.shrewballooba.co.uk/anim2/
No issues as I can see.

(apart from that gimbal lock on the arm. Y key)

Press keys QWERTYUIO for animations