Noob's trial on importing / exporting a Blender Model

Troubleshooting graphics
1

Greetings.

I’m an amateur programmer with minor experience in gaming. I’m very interested in jME, and have done my best to follow through the tutorials in an attempt to study it.

I put my own minor spins on the tutorials, from changing names, to outright changing structures (for experiments). I’ve gotten as far as jMonkeyEngine 3 Tutorial (5) - Hello Input System, but one tutorial continuously stumps me; namely, the jMonkeyEngine 3 Tutorial (3) - Hello Assets. Now, copy-pasting or directly following the instructions is no problem at all. What I tried, as per my usual experiments, is to set my own texture (material) to a box, and importing a gingerbread-man model my sister designed for me.

I’ve been able to set the custom texture to the box no problem, but as for importing the gingerbread man, I did it too, but not in the way I’d have done from the tutorial. I’ve installed the Ogre XML exporter (script?) by going into jME SDK, Tools -> OgreXML -> Install Blender Ogre XML, but going into Blender, File -> Export Shows no export to Ogre XML.

What I’ve done instead is just put the .blend file in the proper assets folder, and convert it into a j3o file, and import that. That works, but that’s not the results I’m after. The Gingerbread model has a skeleton, and a basic walking animation, and I don’t know what happens to those when I convert it to a j3o file.

Is there something I’m doing wrong?

Things of note:
> Using the RC2 of the jMonkeyEngine.
> My Blender’s version is 2.65, 64-bit
> My OS is Windows 7, 64-bit version
> Importing the Gingerbread man as a j3o file works.
> The Gingerbread man has no textures (it’s grey, according to jME)

Thanks to anyone who answers.

Regards,
Zack_Falcon

2

It sounds like you are going about things the right way (in terms of learning the engine).

I don’t use skeletal animations so I can’t really help on the import. I use the direct blender import all the time and it works very well - but that is without animations.

3
@zarch said: It sounds like you are going about things the right way (in terms of learning the engine).

I don’t use skeletal animations so I can’t really help on the import. I use the direct blender import all the time and it works very well - but that is without animations.

Yes, well, it just bugs me that the tutorial sample used an Ogre XML file (the ninja) and I can’t produce / load one myself.

I’ve been able to import the Gingerbread model fine, but as you said, no animations, and if I remember correctly, no skeleton either.

What I’m going to try (and hope for) is to use a lower version of Blender. Maybe that will work.

Regards,
Zack_Falcon

4
@zackunderscorefalcon said: Yes, well, it just bugs me that the tutorial sample used an Ogre XML file (the ninja) and I can't produce / load one myself.

I’ve been able to import the Gingerbread model fine, but as you said, no animations, and if I remember correctly, no skeleton either.

What I’m going to try (and hope for) is to use a lower version of Blender. Maybe that will work.

Regards,
Zack_Falcon

The SDK nightly comes with a blender animation template file that has a working bone animation as an example. You can download only the file here: https://code.google.com/p/jmonkeyengine/source/browse/trunk/sdk/jme3-blender/src/com/jme3/gde/blender/tpl_anim.blend
The content of this post is meant to be read as a straight information or question without an implicit dismissive stance or interest in having the other party feel offended unless theres emotes that hint otherwise or there’s an increased use of exclamation marks and all-capital words.

5
@normen said: The SDK nightly comes with a blender animation template file that has a working bone animation as an example. You can download only the file here: https://code.google.com/p/jmonkeyengine/source/browse/trunk/sdk/jme3-blender/src/com/jme3/gde/blender/tpl_anim.blend The content of this post is meant to be read as a straight information or question without an implicit dismissive stance or interest in having the other party feel offended unless theres emotes that hint otherwise or there's an increased use of exclamation marks and all-capital words.

Thanks. I’ve downloaded the file, but whenever I load it up in Blender, all I see is the standard box and that camera thingy.

As you can guess, I’m pretty much a noob at blender. In any case, the gingerbread man model that my sister made for me also has bones, and a walking animation. I saw some code somewhere in here that allows the player to “see through” the model and see the bones, maybe I’ll have a look at that and see if the bones work if the model is imported straight as a .blend file.

6

For the ogre export to work, you need to apply all the modifiers, rotations, scale, etc. …

As for importing skeleton animation right from the blend file to JME, I had no luck yet. But no time to look at it properly neither. :frowning:
For non-animated models, it’s the best way !