Wavefront obj? But it doesn't contain joint information at all, so all bone assignments will definitely be lost.
Which Max do you have? If 9, then there's only exporter. If 5-8, then both exporter and importer are available.
I agree but it's not impossible to mesh in Max, then export your mesh from Max to Milkshape - in obj or whatever - and then do bone assignments in Milkshape and export from Milkshape to SimPE. There's smoothing group issue to be taken care of, though.
I didn't tried this way - my object was split to subsets so that I could fix assignments in SimPE - but it should work too.
Lol, definitely :D
That's how it should be normally - when you select a bone, areas of mesh which are controlled by that bone are shown, in the same color as bone in the list. (So blue bones don't appear well, on blue background ) If there are multiple bone per vertex assignments - edges of highlighted areas would be half-transparent. Clothing meshes are good examples of how it's supposed to look
As Wes explained - comments differed on purpose, so that people wouldn't mix up different formats accidentally

I have 9.

Yes, thanks to your help that seems to be working pretty good. I did run the smoothing group. I usually get a lot of flipped vertexes every time I import things into max, which has always boggled my mind. I can export something with vertexes all good, then re-import it and sometimes as many as half the vertexes get flipped.

I figured this must have something to do with my problems but had trouble getting the gmdc to export. I'm really not sure if I am doing the bone assignment right yet either. Now it makes me wonder how many of my other creations would work better if I go back and fix the bones. I believe this also helps to explain why things are so hard for me to get working. I've never tried to do any clothing meshes.


New question: I have my items working close to what I want but my sims don't seem to snap into the items and move with them. With my rideable items I was able to use the snap into to get them to sorta stick to the item, but that's not working with these items. Any suggestions? I hate to think I'd have to create animations for the sims to go along with the items. Is that my only option? (praying it's not )



To get my swing to move in game I had to have my animations start as pictured. I also had to do this with my bouncy or else the moving parts would drop down into the ground and you were not able to see the movements. This took me hours to figure out. I finally got to this point at 5 A.M., I was determined.

Lol! That was certainly interesting!

Can't comment on the Max stuff, since I don't use it, so I'll skip that question.

My guess is that the reason that your sims aren't moving with the object even though they've been snapped into the slot is that you're either snapping into the wrong slot, or the slot is in the wrong place in the hierarchy. There are two working container slots in the object you posted, and one is attached to the tray_trans node (and thus is animated), and one is attached to the highchair node. Since this is based on the highchair, the toddler will most likely be getting snapped into the highchair node. You have two options here:
1 - Move the "slot_highchair_0" node under the tray_trans node, or
2 - Make the "slot_highchair_std_0" capable of containing sims, then change all references in the code from slot 0 to slot 1.

I'd probably prefer the first one, but it depends on how cres-savvy you are. As a quick rundown of the steps involved:
- Go to the node which is a parent of the slot you want to move (in this case, "highchair").
- From its list of "child nodes", find and delete the row where the last number is the number of the node you need to move (in this case, 4).
- Go to the node which you want to move the slot into (in this case, tray_trans).
- Whatever value you deleted from the other node's "child nodes" section, put it into this node's "child nodes" section.
- Commit, then open another file, then reopen the cres. Check that the CRES hierarchy has no red 'x's and doesn't crash.
- Save.

As for the crazy location of the chair in Milkshape, I think you'll find that's related to your issues with exporting and re-importing the gmdc and the cres. When you first went to make your animation and you did the "import cres" step, did you move the "tray_trans" joint before you assigned vertices and animated it? If you did, then that's the problem. You can't move joints before you assign vertices to them, unless you also make the same changes in the cres and in the GMDC. The file you're using to animate has to match whatever the cres and gmdc are set up as in your package. (That's the reason we import the gmdc then overlay the cres before we start animating )

Oh Echo Thank-you so much! That worked perfectly. I just knew you would know what to do. I did kinda realize it had something to do with changing from the highchair to the tray trans, as I knew the toddlers rocked with the swing when I had it rocking with the whole frame.

I did start to play with creating body animations though just to see if I could come up with something to go along with the bouncy at least. I have to say the body animations are easier to some extent. (well partly due to my finding I can actually rotate the joints with the mouse as opposed to using the XYZ settings to rotate), but far more time consuming and teadious.

I do have a fair understanding of the cres and joint, my rideable items require a lot of work in this area. I'm not proficient in any aspect, I do lots and lots of guessing then trial and errors. It didn't dawn on me that the slot would be different though. I guess my brain is getting tired from this project. It's been a real challenge, but a lot of fun too.

Yes, I agree that the importing and exporting problem is most probably the reason behind the strange positions. Everytime I made any change to the cres I started from scratch, so to speak, re-imported etc. I made so many changes I can't even remember for sure what I did lol. I'm just so pleased to even get this far on it. I believe I will be able to actually accomplish my goal to get my swing to swing. I've wanted to do this since I create the original one, I played with the maxis swing and tried to use that but I just was not happy with the results. My swing is my top downloaded item, so hopefully this new version will top that one.

Echo, I just can't thank-you enough for all your help you are the best!

Thank you for the compliment. As far as the "profits" go, a lot of people, and especially Marvine and Echo ought to get a "cut" too. Their tutorials and demo items were written on beta copies of the plugin.

I have been watching your posts, and since Echo is really much smarter than I am at making the animations and especially the BHAVs and so on, I have let her carry the ball.

I have a test version of a plugin that seems to work for exporting animations from Maya via FBX and into MilkShape, and then from MilkShape to the game via the plugin. Due to some odd design issues, the mesh cannot be exported into a GMDC successfully because the bone order has changed. When I rearrange the bones, the mesh exports but the animations are now hosed. So it might require two different plugins after an FBX import, one for GMDC and one for ANIM. And this works only for Body Meshes, because while all body meshes have essentially the same skeleton design, virtually no two objects in the game have the same skeleton, except perhaps those that really have none and are animated via root_trans and root_rot.

But the reason I mention this is that I think 3DS Max also exports FBX files, and that the format is shared between the Maya and the 3DS products. If I am correct in this (and I have neither maya nor 3ds here), you ought to be able to animate and mesh in 3DS and get them into the game using FBX combined with this plugin, which rearranges some of the data back like AniMesh expects it by reading it from a GMDC file. Going from the game to milkshape to maya via FBX works without anything special, it is the reverse trip that has problems.

<* Wes *>

Wow Wes! This is so great news! I use Maya 6.0 for all object meshing and love that tool. I never thought we would be able to use it for animated objects as we are not so many using the tool.
I did download a FBX plugin for Maya a while ago and got the animations from milkshape to Maya as you said, and I tried to get it back to milkshape and exported via Ani-mesh and as you say it doesn´t work.

I am not clever with these things, but if you need help testing I am more than willing to try.

PM me an email address where you can receive an attachment, and I will send a test version to you (for the animation export). I have one other maya user that has used this, so I have high expectations, although I think the overall audience is pretty small.

<* Wes *>

You're welcome for the compliment Wes_h, I agree Echo and Marvine have contributed a lot to this project. So I too would agree with the profit distribution. lol! Now to convince the MilkShape creator.

I also, agree with Sofal this is great news but I unfortuantely don't know how to do animations in Max so I'm afraid I wouldn't be much help with this. Max does have an option to export FXB files at least my version does. I'm sure I could learn how to do the animations in MAX if you do need me to test it.

I do have a question for you Wes_h or anyone else that may have the answer. I have created a small toddler animation but when I try it in game they don't do anything. I may have missed something for exporting, I've tried to read all the thread but didn't see anything different about importing it in to my package. I've included a very short version of one of my attempts. I'm trying to use this for my animated bouncy. If there is another tutorial I need to read and/or thread please let me know the link. Any help would be very much appreciated.

The animation works in MilkShape here, but I did not try to game test it. It looks like it ought to work, and I suspect the problem is linking it into your package. If the animation file cannot be found, the game does not error, it just acts as if it was never requested to be played.

In the package, there are text files (STR#) where the anim names go. I think that the child, toddler and adult anims all have different files and instances, so the name has to go in the right list. Name references are the exact name, minus the _anim ending.

You put the ANIM file in your package. You must specify the group as 0x1c0532fa, even if the rest of the package is in a custom group like 0x1c050000, because Maxis has a booboo in the game engine they never fixed. Name the anim and do a FixTGI in MilkShape to set the Instances values.

You should be good to go. To confirm that things are linked correctly, you can use the displayanimbillboard cheat. If you see your animation listed as playing and nothing happens, then it is a broken animation somehow. If you click on your menu (or whatever trigger is used) and the billboard displays nothing, then the game is still unable to find it. Try that and then let us know, perhaps uploading the package instead.

<* Wes *>

Thanks so much Wes I did find I hadn't fixed the integrity. Sorry! My animation does actually play but not at all like I'd intended. Maybe this will give some of you a chuckle. The infant is the cutest or is it my tiredness that make it seem so funny.

For our last frame in our sims animations should we use the position Dr. Pixel's base meshes start at. I messed up my toddler body with my animations her arms are all backwards and she walks on an angle. The problem is I don't want my last frame to have them stand up straight. Strange thing is the infant seems to be fine. Maybe it was just a fluke with my toddler.

Any suggestions would be very much appreciated. Sorry for so many questions but I really want to learn how to do this right.

I believe now that you have things that work, you will quickly hone in on perfecting them. While I coded the plugin and understand the science (mostly) behind animations, I am actually very poor at making them, or good meshes. That is art, and programming is science, and I am not blessed with much art talent.

When you make an animation, it plays not from the "T" or the arms at sides, but rather what you set as the first keyframe. Dr. Pixel recommended the arms at sides, because most of the activities adults and teens do starts and end in a position close to that.

Whatever the last frame of your animation is, that will be the way the sim stays until some other animation runs. By way of example, a push-up exercise routine might be done with three animations, one that starts at arms-at-sides and ends with the sim in the toes-on-ground, arms fully-extended pushup start position. The second could contain one cycle of the sim easing down to the ground and back up, while the third animation would be moving from the arms-extended toes-down position back to standing.

At run time you would play animation #1, loop animation #2 some few times and then play animation #3. For frames, you want the first frame of #1 to match the last frame of #3. The last frame of #1 would match the first and last frames of #2 and the first frame of #3.

So there would be smooth transitions between these three animations. This is because the game will automatically move the sim from the last frame of the previous animation to the first frame of yours. If those positions are far apart, there will be a glitchy looking jump before your animation starts.

So you need to think through what the sim will be doing before and after the animation, and start and end close to that to avoid the jerking jumpy action. While the arms at sides is right for many adult things, and appears to be what Maxis did, for children and toddlers things may be different. While I played the game with kids a little, I really did not explore raising a family (some of my character were mostly interest solely in starting one) in the game, and I would have to do so to design something that would blend smoothly. You probably already have this knowledge.

So, remember that the standard "T" position, which is sort of like frame zero, does not have to be where the sims start animating at. You decide that to meet your needs. What gets written to the game is the actual keyframes, starting with #1. You will see the frame number on the lower right as you step through your animation, but the ones that are actually keyframes are only those where you used ctrl-k, where the skeleton changes color. All in-between frames are created by MilkShape, and also in game, by interpolation.

So ask another question so I can write chapter 2 of this book.

<* Wes *>

I have made some toddler animations and what I do is figure out what position the toddler will be in just before my animation start. If the toddler is sitting, I try to make the first frame a sitting position similar to the previus one. If the toddler is snapped to a slot in a chair that would also mean to lover them down, so the but is on "ground level" to get them to not float above the chair in the air.

Just a thougt I havn´t tested yet. If I would like to start at a complicated position, like the child sitting on the floor with crossed legs. (I have had problems with that)Perhaps it would be possible to copy the position from that maxis animation to the new animation by copying them to the values for the first frame on the leg bones in SimPe?

Hi Wes! I got the plugin and made my first quick test. I used an adult GMDC from the Sims 3D/sims 03 package. I do´n´t know if it is the right place to find a sutable one?
I got the animation in game but it was mixed up. I hope I will have some more time to test tonight and post the files. I am so exited about this!

This is what I did:

I opened drPixels adult Base Mesh in Milkshape and exported as FBX.

I imorted to Maya with the default setting and got a warning. I clicked ok and imported it in Maya. I made a simple animation in Maya and exported as FBX with the default settings. I imported in Milkshape with these settings and imorted a gmdc from Sims 3D/sims 03 package.

(I didn´t make those no anims comments as I forgot and now it is to late and I have to go to bed!)

That sounds right.

Dr. Pixel made a set of starter meshes with the head and hair included, they are posted in the animation section. Those should be good to start from (there are adult, child and toddler versions).

The file I sent you should allow you to get the animation from maya to the game, but the mesh will not be right if you try to export that. Something diferent needs done for that part to work.

I also do not know if there are any options in the FBX exporter that need to be set a certain way, because I don't have maya to work with myself. I trust you will figure it out, though.

<* Wes *>

You posted while I was writing my last post.

It appears that when you made your animation in maya you moved the default skeleton position. I am not sure how to do this, but you want the default position to stay the same as the game (the "T" position). This will be the frame that shows before you click on ANIM in MilkShape.

For your simple pose, you want to set the start as the first keyframe. In MilkShape this happens when you click on "Anim" but I do not know how to tell you to do it in maya. Then you move the legs and arms and set another keyframe.

But to get it right you need to have both. When I open your MS3D file, the default pose has been changed, and that will never work right. The default pose must match what is in the CRES (the game default position) or you will see strangeness, because then the mesh gets positioned opposite from the way you moved the bone. Perhaps you can look in your maya manual about the bind pose, maybe you need to make one of those in maya beofre making animation frames.

The good news is that the skeleton animates in MilkShape, meaning the animation frames were copied over, so if you get the default pose issue right, you should be in business. To tell even before testing in game, turn "show skeleton" back on in MilkShape. Load you model. When the Anim button is up, the mesh and skeleton must be in the default "T" position, when the Anim button is down, the model should jump to your starting animation position (frame 1). Until that works right, exporting to the game will just be wasting time and effort.

<* Wes *>

NOTE: In case it wasn't clear, you only want to use the exported animation file (.5an) with some Sims2 mesh. Don't try to export both to the game, after making the round trip the mesh is not usable as-is.

solfal, when you are finished creating your animation in Maya select your root joint and do a "skin / go to bind pose" before you do the Fbx export. That way when you open the Fbx in Milkshape your skeleton is at the proper "T" bind position. As soon as your click the Anim button it will go to the position of your first keyed frame.

What I'm trying to figure out and maybe you know is how to pose frames in Maya via IK or FBIK and than key FK so it will show up in Milshape. Right now it's all FK which is a lot of work compared to being able to pin joints and move whole systems via IK or FBIK. I know you can bake an animation curve but how do you than export that in Fbx in a way that it will show up in Milkshape?

Thank you so much Wes and bsett!
I only had a little time tonight to test and when I got the T position right it looks as it should in Milkshape!

I have only tried once to export with IK handles Bsett and I didn´t got it to work.
Being able to make FK animations in Maya for sims is a very big step forward though and I am so happy about it!

I finally had time to do a little more testing.

I have tried both to set the first keyframe in T position in Milkshape before export to FBX and to set "go to bind pose" in Maya before exporting back, both with the same result.

I now get the animation back in Milkshape as it should be but the arm position is mixed upp in game. The sholder seems to be the problem area.

To get the animation back to Milkshape I have to check "sample key at each frame" when importing it back from Maya and that get every frame to be a keyframe, so it makes the file quite heavy I guess.

I used DrPixels base Mesh for the GMDC part. (Exported it with the uni mesh exporter to get a GMDC, didn´t understand at first how to use the milkshape files but I hope this was the right way.

(The object I used for testing it is not related to the animation, just testing!)

I just open Dr Pixels Meshes in MilkShape. I don't create a GMDC I just export the animations. I actually just double click on one of his files and it opens in milkshape. Am I wrong? I haven't been exporting as a GMDC, I don't know what I would import body meshes into.

Am I misunderstand what you are saying here Solfal?

By all means, just use the file Dr. Pixel made as your base, it is ready to load into MilkShape and start animating it. Then, as rebecah said, just export the animation (makes a .5an file). The standard GMDC does not have a head and hair, these were added to the base to better visualize the animation.

<* Wes *>

And Mr. Solfal, I cannot figure out how to see your character in the game. Either it is not base game compatible or I am just missing something. I can open the package, of course, and I probably could move the animations to a different tester, but that would be work.

I am sorry. I am not good at explaining what I mean.
I always use DrPixels base meshes when I make animations and it workes great.
I was talking about when I had impoorted the FBX file from Maya and had to import a GMDC to Milkshape before exporting the animation.
I will post a new package as soon I have time. The one I did send is found under decoration misc and is a tiny little candle. I used that object to try the animation. It is base game compatible. (I only have base game at the computer I use to work from.)

Solfal

(I am a female )

My apologies, Ms. Solfal!
I found the candle, and managed to try it on.
I saw two problems with the animation. One is the right shoulder at the crazy angle. The other was a bend in the upper arm at the l_bicep.

The second one I have seen before, but I do not know where it is being created at (in the FBX, in MilkShape or in my plugins). But you can make it disappear by placing NoAnim: in the comments for the l_bicep and the r_bicep. You should also add NoAnim: for all the _hair bones, because they create a glitch when your animation changes back to the first one (I think you must have made that one in MilkShape).

Please try again and look at the shoulder in maya before exporting. Use the NoAnim: on the bicep please and if the shoulder is stilll out-of-whack, please send me the .FBX file itself, so I can try to find the problem.

But... we are a lot closer than we were before.

<* Wes *>

Yes, and I am so glad you are working on this!

Hmm I tried to use the NoAnim on the hair and biceps but then I couldn´t export it as an animation. I tested several times and I can export it before I make the changes but after it says it hasn´t the quarternion values when I try to export it.

The sholder looks ok in Maya.