My current workflow is: Maya - export to obj -> prefab (export wavefront obj or as3 file); however, I would appreciate if someone recommend me a workflow for animating.

Thanks a bunch.

Maya > md5mesh md5anim
/forum/viewthread/2594/
how it works

If you have 3ds Max there is now a well-functioning AWD2 exporter that supports skeletal animation. Prefab will also soon (in the next release) support export of skeletal animation in AWD2 files, allowing you to import for example Collada and export it as AWD2.

The Maya exporter for AWD2 is currently broken, but I will do my best to get it up to speed ASAP.

EDIT: Note that I am assuming here that you are after skeletal animation. If you just want to do scene/transform animation (move objects around) you are probably best off simply using a tweening engine, although Prefab will also soon have support for this in the editor.

I’m not doing skeletal animation at the moment but normal animation (mesh animation.  ie: simple deform of mesh).

If you are deforming a mesh (the geometry) over time, then you can use the VertexAnimator feature of Away3D. However, the only format that supports transferring such data right now is the rather old MD2 format.

That being said, I often use AWD2 or 3DS even for vertex animation, by simply exporting all the keyframes (morph targets) as separate geometries and then generate my animation sequences (VertexAnimationSequence) with some simple set-up code on the receiving end. You can see in MD2Parser how this is done, and try to mimic it in your own code using Geometry instances that are parsed from 3DS or AWD2 files.

Richard Olsson - 18 June 2012 05:13 PM

by simply exporting all the keyframes (morph targets) as separate geometries and then generate my animation sequences (VertexAnimationSequence) with some simple set-up code on the receiving end ,and try to mimic it in your own code using Geometry instances that are parsed from 3DS or AWD2 files.

Can have a sample file?

I don’t have an example files at this point I’m afraid, but like I said you can look at how the MD2Parser sets up vertex animation using several Geometry instances. Hence, if you create an AWD2 or 3DS “scene” with all the morph targets laid out next to each other, and named for instance “frame0”, “frame1” et c, you can easily mimic the behavior of the MD2Parser but get the geometries from the AssetLibrary (or using GEOMETRY_COMPLETE events while loading) instead of manually parsing them from a byte array like MD2Parser does.

The relevant parts of MD2Parser are all lines that include the word “VertexAnimation” (even as parts of class names like VertexAnimationSequence.) Just do a search in that file and have a look at those lines.

Jeh Richards way works a treat.

I have them in the same scene in an collada from softimage.
Then i parse all the geometry keys into a sequence.

Essentially;

ModelGeo.animation = new VertexAnimation(2, VertexAnimationMode.ABSOLUTE);
          ShapeAnimator = new VertexAnimator(VertexAnimationState(ModelMesh.animationState))

var sequence : VertexAnimationSequence = new VertexAnimationSequence(“sequence-name”);
        ShapeAnimator.addSequence(sequence);

for(var s : uint; s < ShapeKeys.length; s++)
sequence.addFrame(ShapeKeys[s].geometry, <duration value>);

oh and in my assetComplete handler i build a Shapekeys Vector.<Mesh> like a little library which is easy to loop through.

Hope that helps, works for me. Needed some funkyness though to get the timing across.

Now I would really love to know how to get standard scene (SRT) animation across. I know away3d requires you use a tweener to do this, tho getting the values/keys/timing from the DAE would help. Can’t imagine it makes sense to load up the dae as xml and get it myself…

Also animation workflow i guess, richard har du nån idé kanske?

O