Can TG import an animated object that is tilted, rotating, and moving forward?

[dorianvan]

I have an arrow in 3ds max (all meters) that is located at xyz (-92,0,1). I go to frame 0 and import the arrow object and it "appears" to import in the right spot; however that spot actually says it's located in TG at 0,0,0. When I add the chan animation, it jumps back 92 meters. The pivot point of the arrow in max is not aligned to the world for various reasons.

Can animation only be imported if you have the pivot point in Max aligned to the world at frame 0?
Does the pivot point have to be at 0 to begin with?
Can TG import an animated object that is tilted, rotating, and moving forward?

My arrow is shooting through the air, rotating around its local axis, and lastly it's tilted down from where it starts to where it ends.

Thanks for any insights.

[TheBadger]

You can import a monkey dancing on the head of a clown while the clown votes for a cat for president, if you want. But you have to do it as an object sequence. Object sequences can be very big files to manage. But planetside is working on ways to make object sequences better for TG.

Cheers.

[zaxxon]

Sounds good! I'll vote for the cat too!  . But not only mesh sequences I'm lusting for full FBX and Alembic, and why not get MDD support for point caches and use Pointoven to bring in Speedtree tree and wind motions. I think the Planetside folks are working in most of these directions per some comments here and there.

[dorianvan]

A monkey dancing on a clown's head sounds intriguing, but a cat for president not so much
The cross-hair representing my object is in the correct place, but the actual object jumps back to wrong place.
What would cause the object to not be where the cross-hair is located?

[bobbystahr]

A monkey dancing on a clown's head sounds intriguing, but a cat for president not so much
The cross-hair representing my object is in the correct place, but the actual object jumps back to wrong place.
What would cause the object to not be where the cross-hair is located?

Is your object axis centered on the object. From this it looks like it's a long way behind the object to me.

[dorianvan]

Yes Bobby, the axis was centered. The camera fbx works great, too bad fbx object doesn't work yet.

[TheBadger]

A monkey dancing on a clown's head sounds intriguing, but a cat for president not so much
The cross-hair representing my object is in the correct place, but the actual object jumps back to wrong place.
What would cause the object to not be where the cross-hair is located?

As far as I remember, the only time I have seen what you describe was like bobby said, the 000 point was not placed properly in the object. But if you checked and thats not the problem, then we have to imagine some possibilities.

Is is even possible that somehow you exported an object with data that TG does not read, and that somehow is changing what should be object 000?

Is it possible that in the object node, you may have ticked a box that should not be ticked?

Is it possible that the object file is corrupt?

When you first tried to bring in animated data with you object, is that data somehow still in the object and screwing up how TG understands the object file?

Do you have any additional nodes linked to the object that may effect position?

I am speculating because I really don't recall a time from these threads when a problem like you described was not somehow related to the objects 000. You may have found some new problem, or we are simply overlooking something right in our face but just don't see. Fun!

[TheBadger]

Ahhh, I just reread your post and remembered there was another thread about something similar. I just cant remember the thread.
But, If you search max + chan + position/coordinates (or translation) or something like that, you should be able to locate one of the topics.

As I recall, something from max was getting reversed when it got to TG, or had to be changed before export or something like that. But I don't remember what the conversation was because I don't do those things. But it was definitly Max and TG related topic about position problems. Which may or may not be what your looking for. But at least its here to try, somewhere

[digitalguru]

when I export an object animation from maya this happens also,

my workaround is to animate the object in your 3d package - make a copy, then delete the animation from the copy so it sits at the origin in 3d and export that as an obj (or fbx, but I haven't tried that - should work though)

then export the .chan animation from the original object

in Terragen load the unanimated object, then load the separate .chan file and if it works like it does in Maya, you should be good to go.

edit:

this is assuming that your arrow is not deforming, then of course as Badger says, it would have to be a obj sequence -

[dorianvan]

@Badger, I couldn't find the post, but I'll keep looking, thanks.
@Digitalguru, I'll try that. It may not be a TG issue at all, because when I re-imported my just-exported arrow object, unless I tick the import settings just right, it does the same thing as TG does. I will give your suggestion a go though. Thanks.

[TheBadger]

Did you see this post by Matt? It was also said in whatever thread I was trying to remember. Is it the source of your issue?
http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,18220.0.html?PHPSESSID=6daed9bd1f226e851c6ccd5e0aa4b457

[jo]

Hi,

Not to comment on the origin issues, which it seems like you might have sorted out, but I thought I'd say something about the animation side of things. If your object geometry is essentially static but just being transformed during animation (i.e. tilting, rotating and moving forward) then you don't need to use an object sequence. Just the static model with the animation transformations will work fine. You only really need object sequences if the model is dynamic, made up of multiple parts which are transforming separately and that sort of thing.

Regards,

Jo