Keyframe animations from *.ase

[MaCeMyDay]

Can anyone explain next keyframe animation taken from *.ase file (3D Studio MAX 2.5)

*CONTROL_ROT_TCB {
*CONTROL_TCB_ROT_KEY 0 -0.0531 -0.7061 0.7061 3.0355 -0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000
*CONTROL_TCB_ROT_KEY 2880 0.0000 1.0000 0.0000 3.0602 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000
*CONTROL_TCB_ROT_KEY 3200 0.0000 1.0000 0.0000 0.2699 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000
*CONTROL_TCB_ROT_KEY 4800 -0.0000 -1.0000 -0.0000 0.9966 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000
*CONTROL_TCB_ROT_KEY 7200 0.0000 1.0000 0.0000 1.0332 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000
*CONTROL_TCB_ROT_KEY 8800 -0.0000 -1.0000 -0.0000 0.5864 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000
*CONTROL_TCB_ROT_KEY 10240 0.0000 1.0000 0.0000 0.3787 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000
*CONTROL_TCB_ROT_KEY 11520 -0.0000 -1.0000 -0.0000 0.2304 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000
*CONTROL_TCB_ROT_KEY 12480 0.0000 1.0000 0.0000 0.1065 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000
*CONTROL_TCB_ROT_KEY 13600 -0.0000 -1.0000 -0.0000 0.0698 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000
*CONTROL_TCB_ROT_KEY 14080 0.0000 1.0000 0.0000 0.0122 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000
*CONTROL_TCB_ROT_KEY 16000 0.0000 1.0000 0.0000 0.0175 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000
}

[MarcusL]

It looks as if the first number is time, the next three are an axis, the fourth is the rotation and as the rest of them are zero, I can't really say much.

It could also be a quaternion of four values.

Obviously, this is mere guesswork. www.wotsit.org (http://www.wotsit.org) has some info on fileformats, and if that fails just create some animations with specific movements and observe the results in the file. (Or try to treat them as axis/rotation or quats and see what happens.)

[MaCeMyDay]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by macke:
[B]It looks as if the first number is time, the next three are an axis, the fourth is the rotation and as the rest of them are zero, I can't really say much.

It could also be a quaternion of four values.

Thanks anyway, but can you explain this "quaternion". What is it and how i can use/program it ?

Do you know any web site, where i can find more information about Keyframe animations ?
(TCB Rotations, Bezier interpolations etc...)

[bsenftner]

The rotation information exported by 3DSMax's ASE exporter is something to the tune of "time (quaternion x,y,z,w) tension continuty bias easeIn easeOut". A total of 10 numbers.

It's a bitch, and I never was able to get all the quaternion + TCB + easeInOut logic working (actually, as I worked on it I progressively got more and more disappointed about the time it would take for every evaluation, until I abandoned solving it.)

What I did instead was open up the ASE exporter and change how it exported rotation keys. Now I get an axis,angle from the exporter and not in three years have any animators asked what happened to their TCB/easeInOut tweaked animations.

If you like, I've made the 3 versions (Max 2.5, 3.1 and 4.0) of my tweaked exporter public. You can get them here: http://www.pond.net/~davem/asciiexp/

-Blake