preset Animations?

Summary:

How to use animations that are preset with a model? (like .fbx files)

preset Animations?

Daniel (guest) 27 Dec 2011 22:44

I've looked through the tutorials and don't think it is covered, so I ask it here: How does one go about using preset animations using XNA? Is there an API for this? What I mean is, in 3DS Max, one can create a walking animation and such to associate with the model. Is there a way to access this walking animation?

Re: preset Animations?

EmpiresBane 27 Dec 2011 23:35

Is this sort of what you're looking for?

http://create.msdn.com/en-US/education/catalog/sample/skinned_model

Daniel (guest) 28 Dec 2011 00:07

Kinda, but I don't get it too well. I'm pretty new to all this.

EmpiresBane 05 Jan 2012 21:34

Do you know how to export from 3DS Max or Blender and load in into XNA? If you do, I may be able to help you. It would also be nice if you could tell me if you're using 3DS Max or Blender.

WindwalkerDM 12 Jan 2012 07:05

Hey there Rb;
Miss me? :D

First; I now have a job and it halted the progress of skull lord, but alas, I am now moving on again. Only twp things remain for the game, a highscore table where players can input their names, and finding an original music. (currently I am playing dune 2 music which strangely fits)

Anyway, this particular subject about animating 3d models is also importan for me now two, because now our team got doubled! (now 2 people) and my friend is a nice and shiny 3dMax user. I have been working on understanding 3d with XNA 4 for two weeks now and it's going fine-ish. So animating the models are importan for us too. So … instead of a new thread I went in straight here.

I understand there will be "bones" and my friend has to create them. Then I should take them in and? Use matrices in a magical way for animation? Or my friend will do animations in 3dsmax and they will compile into some array of matrices and I will create a function that calls them?

Thanks in advance.
Best Regards.
(note: I always keep coming back. You are so good in making tutorials that you should keep on just for the sake of that.)

rbwhitaker 13 Jan 2012 14:03

The link that EmpiresBane put up is as good of a start as I know of.

3D animation is an area, where I must (sheepishly) admit that I have no real information to give you. Unlike you, I don't have an artist to help me! The 3D modeling tools that I use don't have much in the way of skinning/bones/animation, and for that matter, most of the games I've made haven't needed too much in the way of 3D animation.

I'd love to play with Maya or Max and do animation stuff, but I can't justify spending the $4000-$5000 on it when I'm not really an artist. So I use free tools. And I love 3D modeling. But I'm just not an artist, so I can't convince myself that it is worth all of that money.

However, I'd like to see if I can help in this area. I can't promise that I'll really have much time, but still…. Like I said, my biggest limitation is that I just don't have any skinned/animated models to play with. Perhaps you can send me one of your models (probably in lots of formats: FBX, .X, and .3DS) and I can play around with it for a while. I may or may not be able to come up with some useful help within the time frame that you need it, but even if not, I'd eventually be able to put something together that can help other people.

Just for the sake of being clear (not that you'd misunderstand this or anything), I'm not offering to join your team (I just don't have the time for it, and it really sounds like you're moving along just fine anyway—I'd probably just mess up your flow!) but rather, play around with one of your 3D models and see what advice or direction I can give you for how to do 3D animation, loaded from a model made in Max. I may or may not be able to help you in the time frame that you need, but it would definitely be useful for other people learning XNA later on.

In fact, ideally, you'd be able to send me a model that I could eventually put up on this site (for free) as a part of a tutorial. That would be awesome!