A few questions about creating and importing models

Troubleshooting graphics
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Hi!

I have a few questions about creating models in, and importing models from, blender.

  1. What’s so special about the root bone? Must I name it “root”, or something?
  2. I’ve heard in several places that I must use the NLA editor to add all animations to a track, is that right? Can’t they just be Actions in blender?
  3. Say I want my models to be able to hold weapons, but the weapons are separate models. Then of course I can make the weapon a child of the character in the scene graph, but how exactly do I make the weapon “follow” (both position and rotation) the hand during animations? Should I make a bone for the weapon in my character model, or something?
  4. Say I have an animation called “Run”, and another called “Attack”. What is the best way to combine them to make a running attack? Can I play both at the same time, or should I combine them inside blender somehow?
  5. What is a good number of triangles/polygons to aim for in a model nowadays? Say if I want to be able to display 50 of them or so at the same time.
  6. Are there any other gotchas I should know about? :stuck_out_tongue:
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3: Yes, create an attachement bone. If you edit the j3o-file in the SDK, you can navigate to the bone under SkeletonControl and then right-click the attachement bone and select add attachement node or whatever it’s called. Then you can add the weapon to this node.

4: Look at the Sinbad models that comes with JME3, there you can combine animations for the top and bottom part of the character at the same time.

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@fowlie Ok! Thanks! I don’t use the SDK but I will experiment. :stuck_out_tongue: