.x Animations

 Hello, are .X file animations supported ?
Are MD5 files the only way to have animated meshes ?

Thx.

[Haddd]

 at his moments they are not supported, but we are recoding all the animation, and maybe the .x animation system will be included

[gameboy]

 I would heartily recommend that you support .x animations (and file format in general, including multitexturing, etc.), as many 3D applications support this file format.

Another file format to consider supporting is the Collada file format, which was designed from the beginning to be a universal format for interactive 3D applications, and is supported by several big names in the 3D business. It is gaining in popularity.

[Haddd]

 We plan to support .x as native import, but it's not a priority.

No plan for collada at all. We have a lot of work, and we prefer to spend our time in other things.

Remeber that Haddd is a free engine, created by 3 people at their spare time.... :(

[donald]

 on a side note, md5 is these days solidly supported by Blender, Gmax(thanks to berseker, this one), Lightwave, Max, and there are many viewers and tools.

Even more,having doom3 game, you can install plugins for export for XSI, Maya.


As far as I remember, haddd supports obj and ase...or some scenery format... so..imho, is good enough...

[Haddd]

 We are recoding ALL the exporting issues, so there will be a lot of changes about this. We are making big changes at core, and adding flexibility to the engine. If you take a look at Haddd you will see that it's VERY easy to activate any effect, and we want to keep this filosofy.

As far as i can say, we now have volumetric particles, and the particles can be affected by the light, giving an incredible reality effect, believe me.  (genial)

And we have deprecated the DX.Mesh object and we are working now with VertexBuffers. I think we have created a very very easy, the easiest as i can see, access to the vb elements....

The portal visibility technology is been constructed and creating worlds and exporting from MAX will be very easy and powerful....

We expect to do a massive update at end of April.

[Vicente]

 Even if we have been a little quiet during March, don´t think we have stopped working ;) We´ll do an announcement soon (start of April) explaining some things and to the end of April there will be an update to the graphics and AI part of the engine (and this upgrade is sure to be at that date, we can´t miss that date as you´ll learn soon ;)).

I know that Berserker is working very hard in the exporting part to allow animations and more flexibility (with the MD5 file format). Don´t know if the .x files will do it to the engine in April, as Haddd said, lot of work to do, and few people to do it ;)

Greetings!

Vicente

[donald]

 Anyway, Blender 2.41 works like charm with der_ton's md5 exporter. I know as I have tested. And this Blender version is much better for animation than it was, yet though, you need to build your own good rig, make good use of available constraints.  With them, and latest improves, chances are you can get very qadvanced kind of character animation with it.

Also, have tested deeply its x exporter. And also works well. (but as a difference, md5 exporter takes new pose module in consideration, while thex exporter, not yet. (but will ).So, in some way, it should be more comfortable to use md5 with Blender, as no need to bake anything, all gets exported correctly. And for what I have seen, is more fail-free.)

I speak so cause...while I prefer generally Max for practical reasons, and for reasons of amount of capabilities, being a free game engine, is good that a free 3d package has come so advanced for character animations.

yet though I'm a bit worried I don't see yet smoothing groups or hard edges for Blender. Neither multiple uvs(I would not consider it for lightmaps baking, while there's some sort of solution )..

The only advantage I'd see for now (important for me, but I've no time now, very sadly) of x, would be a direct exprot from XSI Foundation.(but as I said, with doom3 game, you can use certain dll kind of exporter.(I think it actually imports to the game ))

max md5 exports, there are two authors for it, and one is a member of haddd.

Gmax I have not tested, but Berseker has made a lot of work with it.


So, I am not sure what tool could be missing here...Maybe Messiah? (x export) but is far from what we could call "spread" among artists... Hash AM and caligari Truespace also do export in x... But maya x exporter has allways have issues, or not all Maya versions supported..(and you can do the dll  thing with this too...)

So , not much more packages left...

[donald]

 
that speaking about character animation formats (and md5 ports even normal maps, lighting and camera info)

For scenery, I dunno if I'd prefer something simple but common, like vrml2 export. As there are not much common formats having 2 or more uvchannels. Blitz3d b3d has 4, and also is good for character animation (ports weights, but not sure if also curves interpolation, which is quite important... Seems that md5 Blender exporter exports also that correctly) Bad thing is the tools support for it is bare. I just know of Max, and characterfx exporters, that is, among the tools I consider usable. But free lightmappers(while are really few)...some do have support for it and its multiple uv channels. (ie: Lightmapmaker 3.8 )