Creating Blue Mars .caf (character animation) files
From Blue Mars Developer Guidebook
Contents |
Introduction
In Blue Mars .caf (character animation) files, animations of the skeleton nodes (bones) are encoded as keys, where each key consists of a time value, position value, and rotation value.
Values are linearly interpolated between keys.
Time Values
The time value is saved as ticks per second, which is an artifact from the CryEngine2 Exporter for 3ds Max. In order to compute ticks per second, the CryEngine2 Exporter extracts two values from the 3ds Max configuration: ticks per frame and frames per second. Unfortunately, ticks per frame is not exported by ColladaMax, and neither value is exported by ColladaMaya.
bmImport allows for these values to be set via the edit fields, Ticks per second: and Frames per second:. bmImportCmd allows for these values to be set via the command line options, -ticksPerSec and -fps. By default, ticks per second is set to 4,800 (the 3ds Max default) and frames per second is set to 30.
Exporting from Maya
Using the Outliner or the Hypergraph, select the skeleton root node/joint.
Select File -> Export Selection....
Since the animation keys in the Blue Mars .caf file are linearly interpolated, it is necessary to enable animation sampling. The recommended sampling rate is 0.033333 seconds.
Click on Options... to open the Export Options window and set the various options as shown below:
Click on Export Selection or Apply.
Set Files of type to "COLLADA exporter (*.dae,*.xml)". When typing in the filename, do not forget to include the .dae extension.
Exporting from 3ds Max
Using the Schematic View, expand and select all of the nodes for the skeleton. Selecting only the root node will export the animation on the root node only.
Select File -> Export Selected....
Set Save as type to "COLLADA (*.DAE)". When typing in the filename, do not forget to include the .dae extension.
After you click Save, the Export Options window will open. Set the options as shown below:
Limitations and Known Bugs
- Probably.
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