What if I model has no skeleton but is animated?
For example, I have simulated a dice roll in Maya and the animation is simply keyed to location and rotation channels of the model of a die.
How can I export this animation and get it to work in JMonkeyEngine? There is no need for skeleton since the model is not being deformed in any way. I have no luck trying to find anything about importing such animation.
JMe only supports skeleton animations currently, either node nor morphs are supported. But they are on the issue tracker as far as i know.
Well that’s just silly. Are you trying to tell me that JME creators thought that all we need are skeletal animations? O.o …
Maybe I could rig the dice to a one nod skeleton and animate that but that just feels wrong :x
The Blender importer should support spatial tracks (which is non-skeletal animation). Have you tried it yet?
It is rather simple to interpolate points and quaternions. Why do you not just code up a small module to perform the animation for you?
@vojta.polivka:
If you read about Cinematics, then you know it is possible in JME.
https://wiki.jmonkeyengine.org/legacy/doku.php/jme3:advanced:cinematics
you can also use physics for that case.
i know it’s easier to export that from blender, but devs have better things to do.
if you want, you can make patch for it… it would be nice.
and BTW: even advanced games usually use only skeleton AND shapekeys.(from 3d tools)
@vojta.polivka Yes, please consider using blender sometime! I think as JME grow stronger, it should take advantages from Blender.
Regarding spatial animation, please update you SDK to the lastest version, then you can easily export it in Blender and then import into JME3.
As you make your model an Object animation in Blender, your Node in SDK will have an AnimationControl which has a Action (SpatialTrack) with the same name. You can test it out!
If you want to make a complex Animation and Camera mixture, let make an Empty that Constraint to the Camera.
In run-time, you can use Cinematic to trigger that Empty’s SpatialTrack and use in your JME’s Camera. The focus (or zoom in, zoom out) can be made with one or more Empty. It’s really great that JME and Blender can play that well together. You know, we can make “State of art” cinematic cut-scene in no time!