software for matrix palette skinning?

OpenGL OpenGL: Advanced Coding
1

once you’ve covered all the technical stuff such as vertex progs, one would look for some tool to do the following tasks in a feasable way:

  1. import/export 3d models and/or single limbs
  2. assign vertices weights
  3. define bones
  4. export matrices states so to be able interpolate them in your code (unless you got the chance to do some motion capture)

ok here’s the question: is there any software around that allows all or any of these steps

thanks for any feedback you may provide

[This message has been edited by tellaman (edited 03-01-2003).]

2

Don’t know about 4 but lightwave will do 1,2 and 3.

I do know you can export “motion” files from LW but I can’t tell you anything about what is in them etc.

gmax/3d studio probably also do 1,2 & 3 I would guess (not really familiar with them). I think gmax is a bit particular about 1 though (only uses gmax files for exporting?).

The big benefit of gmax over 3DStudio/LW is you don’t have to sell a kidney to own it (gmax is free in it’s basic form).

Of course these also Maya I guess (Mayas going rate is 2 kidneys isn’t it?). Theres a Maya “Learning” edition kicking around which might do something useful & is free (a version of it came on the 3rd disk of UT2003 - but I haven’t looked at it).

3

thanks a lot for your time

4

gmax is crippled and useless for exporting stuff (except for a few limited formats).

5

im not familiar with maya or lightwave since presently im completely satisfied with 3ds max (it provides skinning and vertex weighting functions and its not very complicated to write an exporterplugin to get this information into your own fileformat)

6

Blender (http://www.blender.org ) should be able to do the 4 steps, but you need to find export plugins for 4). Or you can program a Python plugin yourself to export in your desired file format.

7

thanks for your feedback
i also heard cal3d can do it, so now i’m wondering if it’s worth the effort or if i’d better go for 3ds and find/create an export plugin (darn how comes this is not already included in the package?)

anyone ever tried cal3d?