Character Animation (5)

[pedroaraujo]

Hey,

I've discover how to discover the joints that influence
the meshes in the animations, through the transform.
But I also noticed that some meshes aren't related with
any joint at all! So, how the animation work and how can the
meshes have "movement" if they aren't related the the joints?
Don't they need to be related with the meshes?
Thanks in advance.

best,

Pedro

[joojaa]

QUOTE(Pedro Ara @ 06/02/09, 03:48 PM) [snapback]308760[/snapback]
Don't they need to be related with the meshes?

Yes but. Your only seeing half the picture.

theres 2 kinds of binding, one is straight and other is history influencing.

Joints are trasforms, so they can affect a mesh a skin clusters, which is history influencing a mesh. Or they can affect things by parent linkage, so if the shape is under the hierarchy of the transforms. These sub things in turn can be either bind the thing you have again in the same 2 ways, ad infinitum.

So basically theres a UNLIMITTED number of ways a joint can affect everything around it. Its not possible to describe all the possible ways. Mainly because time would run out out of the universe before all combinations would have been permutated.

However taking the winodw -> hypergraph and selecting graph history will gove you a picture of what affects what in a history way. Taking the outliner will show the parent linkages

[pedroaraujo]

QUOTE(Joojaa @ 06/02/09, 04:12 PM) [snapback]308766[/snapback]
So basically theres a UNLIMITTED number of ways a joint can affect everything around it. Its not possible to describe all the possible ways. Mainly because time would run out out of the universe before all combinations would have been permutated.

So, basically if I want to retrieve (using API) the joints that affect each mesh,
I need all the combinations possible? Doesn't seem feasible to me...
Those are not good news Anyway, thanks for your knowledge sharing, Joojaa
It's always appreciated.

best,

Pedro

[joojaa]

QUOTE(Pedro Ara @ 06/02/09, 06:38 PM) [snapback]308774[/snapback]
So, basically if I want to retrieve (using API) the joints that affect each mesh,
I need all the combinations possible? Doesn't seem feasible to me...

You can get the skin clusters but not everything beyond that is possible. Its also not possible to solve the maya animations so you need to sample maya by some steps. So in either case you can only export a small subset Yes. Just the kinds of things your graph and mayas graph have in common.

So at the end of the day your exporter will do just some of what maya could do.

You can view this as astonishingly bad luck. Or you can be overjoyed that you have system that can extend with your needs ad it already supersedes them.