Baking motion woes... over... well yes, actually!

[rdrdrd23]

For those that remember a frustrated rant a couple of months ago about LW's baking capabilities, I might have seen the light, finally. The `Motion Baker` motion plugin (when set to bake to extra channels) actually works.

You have to
i) CTRL+G the item in graph editor to see the extra channels its made
ii) Manually copy the newly baked channels onto the original ones
iii) Disable any controls/IK etc that was used prior to baking

then you're actually left with pure bone anims.... perfect for game engine.
Two things left now...

I've been using (the slightly quirky, but actually rock solid when they're set up) PLG IK tools, which when baked down left me with inevitable +360 flips during the bake. Easy to fix, but dull and would prefer a EULER fixer script if anyone knows of one???

Also, I guess I might be investing some time over Christmas in reading LScript so I can make a script to
i) search a scene,
ii) find any Motion Baked extra channels
iii) copy the baked channels over the original channels
iv) strip any controls and extra guff

to save me having to do it manually, on every IK/controlled bone motion and every time I remake the baked anims......
(I'm writing my musings out loud, in case any lscript gurus are reading :help: )

[StereoMike]

I'm no script guru, but if your script would help LW exporting stuff to game engines better, then I'd say yeah baby, do it :D

btw, how do you get LW objects/animations into a Wii game? Are there development kits? What do you use?

thanks,
mike

[rdrdrd23]

Hey Mike,
=) I've done a little Python stuff before, so Im sure Lscript won't be a million miles of difference.

As for getting LW stuff onto the Wii... well, theres a few years of core engine development and evolution that has made it transparent in respect to pass ing LW onto the target platform, so I need to give thanks to programmers here for help there.

But in a nutshell our engine loads LW scenes and objects directly, converts them at load time (if it hasn't done so previously), into a renderware+a+bit format. That format then gets used by our GODS engine, which holds the game code and other such stuff, and interafces with Renderware (gfx) and Havok (physics).

Its not groundbreaking in terms of millions-of-polys-per-second or hugely impressive effects, BUT, it does mean we as artists can see assets IN GAME in seconds without the need for programmer intervention.

System over specific anytime! =)

[StereoMike]

Cool. I mean cool for you. hehe, I hoped there was a dev environment for the wii, but boohoo-no it's in-house.
Right now I'm fiddling with dxstudio, it's quite cool, but the target platform is windows only.
Thanks for the info Rob!

mike

[rdrdrd23]

Yeah sorry man- The Wii isn't that dissimilar to the gamecube in many respects, so I'm sure you can find some sort of home-brew systems if you look hard enough. The other thing you can do is to get a Wii-remote for your PC and a blueooth adapter. With the right combination of work-arounds, you can very happily make a virtual joystick whcih works in Windows, which you can make look better than a Wii, but utilise the VERY analogue nature of the Wii controller.

cool eh?