skeletal animation import from 3ds max

[God Of Gaming]

Hello, I'm new to UDK, and I've been working on a tactical fps game for about a month now, and now that I finally finished the model and animations of my first gun (an ak-74m) I have trouble with importing it into UDK. I imported the mesh and the textures and made materials of them and attached them to the gun, so far without problem. Here's a screenie.

So, i tried importing the animations, which work fine in 3DS Max by the way, and what I got is some mess, the hands move but the rest of the gun doesn't. No idea why.

PS. I used .FBX because I couldn't get the ActorX plugin to work.

[geodav]

might help

[God Of Gaming]

Thanks, but it doesn't. Still just the hands move...

[hunharibo]

is your gun rigged to bones as well? Does it have a separate animation than the hands?

[God Of Gaming]

It is, of course, same animation, it works fine in 3DS Max 2012...

Here's how it looks 1/4 into the reload animation in 3DS Max


Here's almost the same frame in UDK, not only the magazine, the whole gun hasn't moved at all, just the hands... Maybe a problem with the skeleton structure or export setting or something like that?

[hunharibo]

You have to understand that the hands and the actual weapon are 2 different entities, and in your second picture you are actually looking at the animations for the hands, not the gun. The gun is there only as a static preview mesh. There is no way for you to watch the 2 animations together at the same time. You need to make a second animset for the gun without the hands and it will move there. Then you have to sync the 2 together in code for your game.

I have successfully done this in my game, PM me if you need help and i can help you out if you cant solve it on your own.

[God Of Gaming]

How could that be, both the hands, the gun, the magazine, the mag release, and the bolt are attached to bones of one single skeleton. BTW the skeleton and anims aren't mine, I just attached my gun to them, but from what I can see it's only one animation for everything, not 2 animations. I don't understand.

[hunharibo]

"Attached" or "skinned" properly? I am getting confused as well, if it is a single skeleton for everything then indeed it should work.

[DT85]

Did you check "bake animation" in the FBX exporter from Max?

[JessieG]

If you have any bone translations, turn off Anim Rotation only when you double click the skeletal mesh in the content browser and recompress the animations.

[God Of Gaming]

Nothing so far worked, but I noticed something interesting just now, if I include one animation together with the mesh when I export from 3ds max, when I import the mesh I get a default animset with this animation, and there the gun and the mag and everything moves, though for some reason the gun is rotated 90 degrees away from the hands... After that I'm even more confused

[God Of Gaming]

So I reverted to the older 3DS Max 2011 so that I can get ActorX to work, and it seems like the problem is in the model not the animations. When I export the .psk file I get an Unmatched Node ID warning and when I try to import it in UDK I get a BUILT WITH UDK has stopped working.

So, the mesh has a skin modifier with envelope controlled by the skeleton bones, or something like that (not sure exactly how that works) and the bones that the parts of the guns are attached to have no parrents, but the bones of the hands are parrented in a tree. As a newbie in all this, I have no idea where and what the problem is and what to do, help please

[Neongho]

If your 3dsmax , and if you are using 3dmax , is old then use actor x it's ok and easy to use .PSA isntead of FBX , just for the anims.

[geodav]

ok i've started a FPA series using max 2011 so have a look at that it might help you along the way.
the series won't be complete for a while yet but it shows a few thing that helps

[DT85]

If your 3dsmax , and if you are using 3dmax , is old then use actor x it's ok and easy to use .PSA isntead of FBX , just for the anims.

Yeah, if you like having to bake your animations manually upon each export to PSA. There's a reason why FBX is the new format to use. :P

[God Of Gaming]

Doesn't seem like I'll be able to get this to work. It's weird since it works just fine in 3DS Max. I even exported it to Counter-Strike and works perfectly there as well. But when I get it in UDK it breaks... I'll be giving up on that and adding it without animation because my deadline draws way too close

[God Of Gaming]

I think I found the villain, but I don't know how to fix it. I hope one of you knows. So, the ''tracks'' in udk, which have the names of the bones when I look at AnimSet -> Delete Tracks, have shown me something. When I make a new AnimSet and import my anims, the tracks for the gun are missing from the list, only the tracks for the hands are there. There is also a default AnimSet automatically generated when I imported the model, it has all the tracks, but when I import the animations it asks whether I want to skip patching missing tracks or something like that.

I added the gun without animations and started coding it, I have it somewhat working, but it just feels weird having such pretty gun standing frozen on the screen with no animations, so if anyone knows the problem, please help

[geodav]

if the weapon is a seperate mesh then it needs a seperate animset.
if your using the utgame code then watch my videos as they will help you

[God Of Gaming]

But it's not a separate mesh, the gun and the hands are all a single object in 3ds max, skinned to a single skeleton, so it seems like for some reason I can't use these animations and skeleton for UDK, but they are fine for other games. Doesn't anyone here have an idea on why is it doing this? I'd really like to avoid having to make my own skeleton and animations, since these are very good.

[geodav]

ok think i mentioned this before but when you play the anim in the udk editor switch on the view bones and see if the bone move in the anim. it may be the case that when you do the anim in max the exporter is not see-ing any keyframes for those bones, like i said have a look at my videos you may see what your missing

[God Of Gaming]

No, the bones aren't moving in UDK, I've checked already, I think you might be right because as I said it doesn't even find their tracks or something like that. I watched your videos but I think I missed that part, I guess I'll look at them again.

But it's weird how if I export one animation together with the mesh, when I import it in UDK it works, but only that animation, when I proceed to add the others they still don't, so it's not much use.

[geodav]

watch the videos, and use actorx if you can

[God Of Gaming]

Watched them again, tried everything I could think of, it doesn't work and it doesn't work... I guess I'll have to give up and make my own skeleton and animations, thing is I don't have anymore time...

[geodav]

sent you a pm, if your still interested