3ds max scale issues in animating

[Legacy_lordofworms]

               Ok, I have been trying to get a simple sphere to scale from little to big in an animation.
using the tutorial for creating animated placeables from "LOKTutorial5"
i can do the 'rotating' easily enough, but simply trying to scale an oblect from large to small doesnt seem to export the animation...but if I delete all keys and do a 'rotate' the animations work fine..??

help, is this even possible in nwn? maybe not and thats why I cannot get this done.

I am for following purposes.
have a sphere linked to a dummy node linked to main modelbase
I have animation set from 1-10 name default
I select my sphere.
click my 'motion' tab
select "scale" for my key
move animation slider up to 10
click 'Autokey/animate'
scale the sphere down.
unclick autokey/animate button.

add animation to modelbase..
click 'zoom' and test, sure enough in max, my sphere grows small and the back to big..

click export.
add model into hak,
nothing..model doesnt move.

if I delete everything and replace the 'scale' with 'rotate' and follow same steps, when exported into game, my placeable now rotates just like my max version..
so why doesnt scale work? what am I missing?
hopefully someone can help me out with this.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy__six]

               Add the AuroraAnimesh modifier to your model.

It's a NWN issue, not an issue with your work in 3ds. NWN is incapable of scaling models in the manner you'd expect it to. However, animesh 'samples' the vertices positions at certain points, making any kind of animation possible, albeit requiring a huge amount of data.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par _six, 03 octobre 2011 - 03:41 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               Yep, I haven't seen a modifier yet that whose deformations couldn't be captured by animesh.  Lowering the number of vertices will (of course) lower the amount of data.  Same thing with lowering the number of samples but NWMax's MaxScript is very touchy- I don't think 1 is an acceptable value so always make sure you put in something 2 or greater.  After that the spinner works nicely.

While it can generate a lot of data at with a higher number of samples you can tune the sample number down until it looks right in-game then call it good.  You'll know when you've gone too low for a particular animation because it simply won't look the same in-game as it does in Max.  No point in having more samples than you actually need, anyway.  It just generates needless data that the tweening will approximate just as well- at least if you didn't tune it down too much. 

If you get a sanity check error from NWMax about too many verts, try your model anyway.  It'll probably work or if not try compiling it first.  Compiling your model in advance also usually reduces the size.  This one seems to prune out static vertices and just keep important data.  I whipped up this model and it started out at 1.45 megs but after compiling was only 445k:

At least that's my assumption about why the size dropped so much. (?) I didn't tune the samples down and the original capsule had way more verts than necessary.  If you've given a bit of thought to a model you want to use animesh on, you can get the size down pretty damned low.

If there are any GMax users out there, you can do this stuff with GMax just as easily though GMax doesn't have as many modifiers as full blown Max.  Sen started a thread on the topic in the Max user's forum which has useful information for those just starting out with it.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 03 octobre 2011 - 06:02 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <nods his gratitude...>

Good stuff to know! So this is how I *should* be animating Her hair... Have to wait for V2 :-/

<...to his sensei>