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I/Ogre User Manual - Spanki`s Prop Shop

1. these files only contain the information needed for skeletal animations new bone positions orientations for specific keyframes times The names of these files is usually the intended name of the animation they provide the plug in scans the file to determine which type it is and presents the appropriate options dialog NOTE There is actually a 3 form of these files with a vta extension that contains vertex animation information but the plug in currently at least does not read those As mentioned above you should load a reference file first Once loaded you will end up with the same type of figure layout that the Ogre3D Import plug in sets up one or more meshes along with the joints rigging and the mesh will be skinned weighted to that rigging but won t have any animations yet At this point you can import one or more as many as you want animation files either appending the animations to the end of any current ones or replacing the current one with the new one The Animation Clip Tag will be updated appropriately as you do so ADDITIONAL NOTES e The names of the Cinema 4D Joint objects that make up the rigging are important the animation files reference those joints by name so don t go editing them at least until you ve loaded whatever animations you intend to e Animations are currently applied to the first figure as defined in the earlier Ogre3D documentation but mo
2. plugins folder 4 Extract the zip file making sure to use included folders The zip file will create an IOgre folder and the contents of the package will be placed inside that folder again I Ogre relies on several new Tags provided by the free IOTags plug in so be sure to download and install that plug in as well using the same steps as above Once both plugins are installed you can re start the application When you re start Cinema 4D you may be presented with a warning dialog stating that the serial license key for I Ogre is missing or invalid When the registration dialog opens you can enter DEMO as a license key to activate the Free Trial period to continue using the plug in after the trial period expires you will need to purchase a license 16 73 Ogre3D Importing Importing mesh files While it s primary use may be as a Digital Content Creation utility for Ogre3D exporting mesh and skeleton files the plug in will also let you Import existing content Since the resulting Object Manager layout will help illustrate some concepts related to Exporting we ll cover the Import functionality first As mentioned in the Overview section the plug in is designed to read the text based xml format files so if you want to import a binary mesh file you will first need to manually convert it and it s Skeleton file if it has one to xml format before importing NOTE the plug in has an option for a
3. 41 73 Export Preparation Unlike Importing Ogre figures mesh and or skeleton the process of Exporting figures requires a bit of preparation and or imposes certain limitations on scene setup and your work flow if you haven t already done so I d recommend that you read the previous Background Discussion section Most of the issues are related to giving the plug in enough information for it to achieve the desired results given any technical limitations and accounting for differences in the source and destination platforms While some of these issues are common to any objects figures you would be exporting many are also specific to each instance for example the names and numbers of animation clips When Importing a mesh figure all of the Import options can be found on the Import Options Dialog However due to the above the same is not true for Exporting meshes figures there are some additional procedures and or Tags that need to be filled in first NOTE Most of this discussion is related to exporting fully rigged and potentially animated figures The plug in can also export single static meshes but the two operations are closely linked intertwined in the plug in so at least the structural hierarchical portions of this should be followed for simple static meshes as well if you re not exporting animations then you won t need an Animation Clip Tag for example but you might still want need the Figure Export Tag and follow the par
4. Export Options Dialog The Export Options Dialog is where the general Export options are set Export MilkShape binary ms3d File Red i Productions Presents 3D binary m Expo y Keith Spanki Young i F http skinprops com z Export Options Presets Last Used Apply F Mesh Scaling Up e Down by a factor of General Export Options All visible scene objects as Geometry Only Animated Figure dwarfl the top sections Presets and Scaling operate like the other modules of this plug in see previous sections for details the lower Tabs section also has similar options but those options are described in more detail below 69 73 Scene Filter Tab The Scene Filter Tab see image on previous page controls the type of ms3d file that will be generated static mesh or rigged animated figure as well as some general options that apply to both types of files All visible scene objects as Geometry Only If this option is Enabled the entire scene is exported as a single static mesh prop with no skeleton or animations Note that objects even entire branches of objects that are hidden in the Editor Window are not included so you can still control exactly what gets exported Rigged and possibly Animated Figure If the plug in finds root level objects in the scene with Figure Export Tags on them which also have a valid Skeleton Root Bone link this option will be available If you use this optio
5. l Ogre User Manual A User Manual for Red i Productions Game Oriented DCC Tools plug in for Cinema 4D R10 1 or later PC 32 amp 64bit Mac 32 amp 64bit Universal Binary Copyright O 2011 by Keith Young Spanki s Prop Shop 1 73 Table of Contents VTA e Wans eae a ace OAR E a ace hen hale 5 End User License AgQree Mentt cccccccssssseeceeceeeseeceeeeeeeeeeeessaseeeessneasseeensaeees 5 Disc E dae 6 RENTAS PUN acrid aea e nether railed outta E Mites cette cutie dal Mey ects 7 Support amp Contact o AAA A A E OIE 8 Requira Meis uri TA 9 A OTL GS VY SLSTU acti cs ae cade ou cov aes ates ste a a Het aa see Sou Get et ase A eG 9 IO Fags PISO tdt raid 9 Revision SO o e o e eS 10 odo 24 A E E nuts enossies vend alles ebenied aude suey sbbasual E EE 10 A tee De O NO 10 ME A aa 11 Version LA ASAS A lgatataveetee 12 NEO LI a E 13 VTE A E A Saal eee 14 A A O 15 NEO a iia 15 Getting Stated e ae ce ear eee S 16 STAM AN OM AAA A A AOS 16 Ogre3D TON TNA aac sa Fe ie tes ed a cae ra ae catia 17 Deletes ie tha ade eee te E ait ARO Maat Ma DN cess E AOU aes an Ae an 17 O 17 Import Options Dil A AAA EA AA AAA A AA A 18 PESO dan ca A laa 18 o A A soc 18 Mesh Tab doo a e te e oe dan ada 19 MN E RA 19 A A O ie T 19 Matt E nda 20 A O a oe ase OR 20 TOPS ZA A dias 20 Swap VRS is snd bs Seria ais cosalloncunstned a en leaialain a netSuedsaced e teas foam e a a 26 Skeleton A O Sus cD Re 27 Skeletal Animationi cei A a Ai 28
6. Cancel 29 most of the options on this dialog only apply to the Multi Files mode so with the Single File option selected most of the other options are ghosted Be sure to fill in or browse to the converter 58 73 program normally this would be OgreXMLConverter exe that is part of the Ogre3D distribution and click on OK After clicking OK a standard file dialog will be presented to allow you to select the file to convert The selected file will be passed to the Converter program you have specified The OgreXMLConverter exe utility determines which direction to convert based on the filename if it has an xml extension it will be converted to binary If it doesn t it will be converted to xml format NOTE While this plug in was primarily designed to be used with the OgreXMLConverter exe utility in Single File mode in particular it could be used as a means of passing any selected file to any specified application or console utility The plug in merely spawns the specified executable passing it the filename Multi Files Mode When the Multi Files option is selected the additional options become available Binary lt gt XML Converter Operation Files Single File Mesh Files Multi Files Skeleton Files Conversion e Both e Binary gt XML XML gt Binary Converter Cancel 1n this mode after selecting OK you will be presented with a Directo
7. Currently no material files are exported Just to be clear inside the mesh file each submesh can reference a material to be used and this reference is will be written out but no separate material related files with color texture shader information are exported at this time 51 73 Mesh Tab This set of options controls what information is written to the mesh file s and in some cases how it gets formatted Export Ogre3D XML File Red i Pro http skinprops com Up e Down bya factor of Mesh Export Options Normals Invert X Axis Vertex Buffer Assignment UY Coords Invert Z Axis Vertex Buffer 0 Shared Geometry SubMesh Names Normal Buffer 1 Tx Vert Buffer 2 Binary Conversion Convert XML to binary Converter note that the Vertices and Faces triangles of the mesh are always exported so there s no option for those Normals This option determines whether Vertex Normals are exported or not If this option is Enabled the plug in will retrieve Vertex Normals for each mesh from the Phong Tag if it s available If it s not available the plug in will compute averaged face normals Just note that if a Normal Tag is present on a given 52 73 mesh the Vertex Normals contained in it will override the normals that the Phong Tag would otherwise generate the Phong Tag will give the plug in normals from the Normal Tag instead of the ones it normally generates and maintains Since the Pho
8. the vertices are written to the file into the submesh level along with the faces While it s not necessary for this discussion also note that since the faces are basically just a list of vertex indices and those indices are either mesh relative or submesh relative depending on the option used above the plug in handles this remapping automatically A further refinement on the above in either case is that the vertices along with normal vertices and texture vertices also get assigned to some Vertex Buffer Without going into the finer technical details it takes more processing time to process additional vertex buffers batches but you get finer control if needed over which vertices are being processed by segmenting them into smaller groups In most cases the game application likely doesn t need any distinction between submeshes relative to processing the vertex positions within a mesh object and the mesh is only broken up into submeshes in the first place due to changes in materials shaders or some combination of the source mesh data and the export process 53 73 With the above in mind the most optimal situation would be e Use Shared Geometry within a mesh whenever possible and or e at least don t create any more submeshes than needed when not using shared geometry each new submesh has it s own set of vertex buffers 1n other words and relevant to this plug in the source meshes within Cine
9. A A O 58 Multi Flles Mode a a tati o 59 Binary gt AMLO taa 60 DIEM A O A See Nos a2 GON eee ete OG aca 60 Mesh Elle tesa etek ov ek iets eon ees anand dee ada eat uae Mae A alan Mule inde ace 60 Skeleton Piles os Tc EE ET E TEONE A EE E 60 BIOI i nA EEIT EETA E dl 60 CONVE A A E E E E NEES S EL eat aan 60 VALVE SOURCE IMPOR Retard dida 61 VALVE Source EXPO as Ao ada 63 Expo pio DIO O ads 65 Rest Bind Pose Framed aio 65 IN ra da A A O ta 66 Mesh reference A A a ES A 66 Skeletal Animations it 66 ARIS AM A die 66 EXPO AA A A A E 66 MilkShap g DINO is aaa 67 MilkSh pes DEX OOM Ns e dead 69 Export Options AO a aa 69 Scene Filter Taba A A a de E coo 70 All visible scene objects as Geometry Ol a A 70 Rigged and possibly Animated FIgur oooocnnccnioccnocnnonncnonononcconancnnncnnonon ccoo nnon conan cnc rnnnncncnnnnos 70 AXIS A dj stmenths annie ii 70 Fig re o A O O N 71 Mes e hehehehe dele nee Sis ol ee eee 71 SOLA A eta co PD cro ee Oca tat eas tt Can oh les ea 71 Skeletal Animations AAA ec hale A lia aia 72 ReSt Bind POSe D T a 0 EAE A ta id lei outer dives Seta 72 4 73 Overview VOgre is an Import Export plug in for Cinema 4D R10 1 or later While originally designed for working with the mesh and skeleton file formats of the popular Ogre3D rendering engine with the recent additions of VALVe Source Engine smd and MilkShape3D ms3d file modules it s new focus is providing Game O
10. Add Rest POS aer 28 Doc Frames Per Second ota a ado 28 IN 29 Importing skeleton A A A 30 Importing Skeleton files a A AR id 30 IMPOR EXA ES ad NT rd ri tin aun ate NE ites 31 Jagua US LE A A Aaa 31 WAEA eLO A ETA E EE E E Rea eats on tv obgiis ok Gls EEA E EE 34 Ninja eUre A A AE E A 36 Usine Presets roie A EI ER la OE Re OAR ENEE a AD ale des eo va E 38 Si DAS do AAA A sae accent 39 A A AA AAA A A a id 39 Backerotid DISCUSION as 39 Export Pr fy AIO Masset nna ae sale ce ea eee a e e ee near a Baseman cance an eens 42 Delinimo a Erre Ana 42 Figure Export Tan lO ida 44 Anm CU li 45 Bake AMAS A AS AAA A A 46 A E e a 46 Keyframing A A A 46 EXport Che a cas 48 Exporting O NE ID OR iO ecos 49 Export Options DO A AE A A A AA 50 PES A A A A da 50 Mesh CIA SA os 51 E A O OT 51 LA A A E 51 All Visible Objects Selected Object Online doin 51 ETE E E A P cance wired elas ced eh oda aheataendea ine T 51 MA is le o ee toligulais 52 A E E eah al gant caine kh eae 52 UV COOLS A cds 53 Shared Cre OMSL tia att 53 SUMEN AMES is RA ESTARAS EAS 54 LA ON 54 TAVE X AKIS A A A NS 55 ISAZA AAA A id 55 BWV PY VBS AAE A sas AA N A EAE E E E A 55 Vertex Buffer Assignment norec AA A E A AA 55 Sk iaa 56 Skeleta AMAN AA A ua ives hu A est oo dee Taurean tase dd 56 Convert XMto binat yA oes rice tical tos 57 CONVE O e dl cates Lerida aa 57 Ogre3D Binary lt XML ConvVerter oooooooocccnncccccccccoooonononnnnnnnononnonancnnonnnrennnnnannnos 58
11. Keith Young This is commercial software You are granted license to use this package on one or more of your own computers ie PC Mac Laptop but you may not redistribute your serial registration code to others in any form the plug in relies on individual Cinema 4D Serial codes You may not decompile or otherwise reverse engineer this product or use any parts of it in your own products Minor updates and or bug fix releases will be provided free of charge to licensed users The distribution archive is a fully functional version of the full package but is limited to a 30 day Trial Period after which you must enter a valid serial registration code to continue using the plug in 5 73 Disclaimer While every effort has been made to insure the intended and safe operation of this utility and there are no known disastrous error conditions we can not anticipate every situation and therefore can not guarantee 100 error free operation By using this software the user agrees not hold Red i Productions it s employees or agents or Keith Young responsible for any loss of work loss of time mental stress or any other actual or perceived damages caused by the use of this software In short THIS SOFTWARE COMES WITH NO OTHER WARRANTEE EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED USE AT YOUR OWN RISK Any questions regarding this license can be directed to typhoon AT jetbroadband DOT com 6 73 Registration Purchasing The first time you run C
12. amp R12 compatibility There were several unpublished intermediate versions along the course of development towards a working the R11 5 R12 plugin but all those changes fixes and or additions were back fitted into the R10 amp new R11 builds as well some of the fixes listed below may or may not be relevent to the previously published R10 version they may be fixes to one of the intermediate versions but the changes listed below include all changes since v1 5 New Features e Added simplistic material file export for Ogre3D e Added support for Maxon License Server e Added new Figure Normalizer plugin to generate mesh spanning smooth Vertex Normals Docs This menu command will generate smooth normals across mesh boundries separate C4D mesh objects as if the separate meshes were joined as a single mesh For example if you split a Sphere mesh in half and one mesh was the top half and another mesh was the bottom half this command would generate smooth normals hiding what would otherwise be a shading seam between the 2 meshes The command will operate on the selected object and any children of that object so you could for example just select the parent figure null object and any meshes under that parent would have their Normal Tags re generated 10 73 Added new BETA as is Blizzard m3 file Import module NOTE The m3 Import module is being included as a bonus as is feature There are no cu
13. and well defined while for the Export plug in the source data mesh rigging and animation info from Cinema 4D is or can be quite abstract and free form Here are just a few examples of what I m talking about Source Data Ogre3D Cinema 4D sub Mesh Names If exists from file From each object in scene but potentially duplicate names and or may not be well defined by the user ie Some objects may end being named HyperNURBS 39 73 Source Data Ogre3D Cinema 4D sub Meshes From file Scene must be parsed and all deformers generators and effectors baked Many objects will need to be split into multiple submeshes due to multiple materials on a mesh There may also be meshes in the scene that the user does not want exported or possibly exported to separate figure files Vertices From file After baking see above the individual meshes then need to be scanned and new unique Vertices generated for any splits seams in either Normal or UVW duplicating the Normal Vertices UV Vertices and Vertex gt bone weighting in the process Normal Vertices _ If exists from file Objects in scene may or may not have Normal Tags or Phong Tags Faces Polygons From file triangles After the above operations all polygons must be converted to triangles and have their vertex indices remapped to account for both submesh splitting and unique Vertex generation listed above Bon
14. are created using the material names found in the mesh file and Texture Tags are added to the mesh es using those Materials Invert X Axis See the notes on Invert Z Axis below Invert Z Axis In Cinema 4D s coordinate system the positive Z direction goes deeper into the scene away from the camera In Ogre3D mesh and skeleton files the the positive Z direction is towards the camera the opposite direction Inverted from Cinema 4D The Invert X Axis and Invert Z Axis options allow you to flip the mesh skeleton X and or Z axis from positive to negative and vise versa In other words if Invert Z Axis is Enabled any positive Z values from the file become negative Z values and any negative Z values become positive Z values This effectively flips the mesh from back to front Note that this operation is not a rotation SO it doesn t rotate the mesh around the Y axis by 180 to make it face the opposite direction it s more like the mesh is collapsed in on itself turned inside out until all the vertex positions have been 20 73 inverted To illustrate why this distinction might be important let s look at an example using the Ninja figure If you load that figure into the CeguiMeshViewer included with the Ogre3D distribution you get something like this F Log Material Mesh ninja mesh note 2 things 1 The figure is facing away from the camera 2 He appears to be right handed has a swor
15. figure is viewed in CeguiMeshViewer Exporting Invert X Axis Invert Z Axis Preserve C4D orientation Preserve C4D handedness Disable Enable Preserve C4D orientation Convert C4D handedness Enable Enable Convert C4D orientation Preserve C4D handedness Enable Disable Convert C4D orientation Convert C4D handedness Disable Disable The cases marked with an asterisk are the default settings and mimic I Ogre v1 0 behavior 1n the chart above Preserve C4D orientation and Preserve C4D handedness are both in reference to how the figure is currently viewed in Cinema 4D regardless of how it got that way whether it was Imported or newly created work The only question at that point which the above table answers is which Export options to set relative to how you want the newly created files to look once loaded back into CeguiMeshViewer If it s 25 73 facing away from the camera in Cinema 4D and you want to preserve that orientation facing away from the camera in CeguiMeshViewer then consulting the chart above you need to Enable the Invert Z Axis Export option You may have noticed a similarity an duplication in fact between the Import and Export settings the difference is in whether you are trying to preserve convert an orientation handedness in reference to how you are viewing it in the source application into how it will be viewed in the destination applic
16. of the documentation next time but hopefully the dialogs and options will make sense the earlier documentation for the Ogre3D Importer should help many features options are similar 62 73 VALVe Source Exporting New v1 4 Editor s Note This section of the documentation is not yet complete in the meantime here are a few quick tips The SMD Studio Model format files are used by the VALVe Source SDK which comes with and can be used to create mods for VALVe s games The smd files typically come in two flavors e Reference files the reference files reference is typically but not always part of the filename contain the mesh geometry triangles section along with the base positions and orientations of the rigging bones skeleton e Animation files these files only contain the information needed for skeletal animations new bone positions orientations for specific keyframes times The names of these files is usually the intended name of the animation they provide the new SMD Export module works with the figure structure set up in Cinema 4D by the various I Ogre Import modules ie It parses the Figure Export and Animation Clip tags It can export both types of smd files and will do so using the same export options dialog depending on which options are set NOTE There is actually a 3 form of these files with a vta extension that contains vertex animation information but the plug i
17. people use my products and am always open to suggestions for improvements Also note that while I make every effort to test my products each individual user may have some particular work flow that was not anticipated or possibly overlooked in testing I can t fix bugs that I don t know about and can t anticipate every potential enhancement suggestion If you want some influence over future enhancements or just want to figure out why something is working or not the way you think it should Help me to help You please take the time to report your findings make suggestions or ask questions in the forums The forums require a free sign up registration but will give you direct access to the author of the product myself I make every effort to answer posts there on a timely basis 8 73 Requirements Application System e Cinema 4D R10 1 or later e PC 32bit or 64bit e Mac 32bit or 64bit starting with R11 Universal Binary e IOTags plug in this is a free plug in available from Spanki s Prop Shop NOTE This plug in does not yet exist I have decided to make this optional for the time being at least The I Ogre plug in currently contains the sub plug ins to provide the new Tags but the rest of this documentation has not been updated to reflect this see below 1OTags plug in My original Wavefront obj file plug in Riptide as well as the commercial Riptide Pro plug ins both introduce a few new Ci
18. section will let you scale the mesh and it s skeleton up or down by a fixed amount Note that the scaling value is specified in whole numbers not fractions General Tab refer to the previous image The General Tab has options related to the type of export operation you want to perform and which files to create Rest Pose Frame Before the plug in can export meshes from the scene it needs to convert bake any Primitive objects deformers generators and effectors to end up with just polygonal mesh objects later on it also converts the polygons to triangles and does some further processing on them Since the figures in the scene may be animated the plug in needs to know which frame on the Timeline will put the meshes and joints bones into their natural not animated state It will animate the document to that frame before doing the baking step above NOTE The Import plug in always creates a frame 1 and sets the joints to their natural state in this frame the animations are then loaded starting at frame 0 All Visible Objects Selected Object Only This option determines whether multiple meshes figures will be exported or only the selected mesh figure NOTE If Selected Object Only is used a figure s root level object the one with the Figure Export Tag on it should be selected before activating the I Ogre Exporter menu Files Here you can select which files to export mesh and or skeleton files NOTE
19. that there are also options for specifying the root mesh and skeleton file names The first thing to note about SMD file Exporting is this the Mesh File Root Name options are used but the Skel File Root Name options are ignored the skeleton is saved inside the mesh reference file and any animation smd files get their names from the names of the animation clips The next topic is the Skeleton Root Bone if you recall from the original discussion on this the plug in uses this in addition to the Weight Tags on polygonal mesh objects to determine exactly which Cinema 4D objects make up the bones of the figure When the various Import modules import a figure 1f they find more than one root level bone a bone with no Parent bone they generate a Cinema 4D Null object as the Skeleton Root Bone and all other bones in the file are made children of that This Null object is the name of the figure with SkelRoot appended When Exporting the Export Skel Root as Bone option determines whether the Skeleton Root Bone whether it s a Null xxxxx_SkelRoot object or a real bone from the file gets exported as a bone I don t want to drag this out into too much detail so suffice it to say that for SMD file Exporting a plug in generated Null xxxxx_SkelRoot object should not be written out as a bone For the other file formats you may or may not want it exported but not for the SMD format Because of thi
20. the plug in needs to split a C4D mesh up into multiple submeshes ie If it uses more than one material then it also has to generate new unique names for those new submeshes it does so by tacking an incrementing sequence number onto the mesh name so if you want further control over the exact names used you ll need to split the mesh up manually prior to exporting Skeleton Name When exporting a skeleton file the name of the skeleton file will also be written into the mesh file and therefore this option gets ghosted the name will be written If you are not exporting a skeleton file you can still force the name of some skeleton file to be written to the mesh file using this option This option can be used for example in a situation where multiple meshes all used the same skeleton file in which case you ll likely want to set the name of the skeleton file to use manually in the Figure Export Tag 54 73 Invert X Axis See below Invert Z Axis See the notes in the Import section for a description of these options Swap Y Z Axis Like the similarly named Import option this feature can now be used when Exporting as well to re orient the exported figure to a Z is Up instead of a Y is Up orientation coordinate system or vise versa if that option was not used when the figure was Imported NOTE The one current caveat to using this option is that you will not get expected results if the parent of the Skeleto
21. you re ready to Export you start by activating the I Ogre Exporter menu option found in the Plugins menu Window Help Execute Last Plugin User Scripts CHoCoT pols Cinemagdsdk InterPoser Pro MslO Resedit E Binary Riptide Pro mL as Undertow Ogre Importer gt XML Converter selecting that will first bring up the Export Options Dialog described in the next section Once you click OK on the Export Options Dialog you will be prompted to select a folder path to save the exported file s to 49 73 Export Options Dialog The Export Options Dialog is where the more general Export options are set Export Ogre3D XML File http skinprops com Export Options Presets Last Used Apply Rename Mesh Scaling Scale Mesh Up Down bya factor of General Export 0 ptions Rest Pose Frame All Visible Objects Selected Object Only Binary Conversion Convert XML to binary Converter Presets The top section of the dialog will let you create select an unlimited number of option Presets This will allow you to easily switch between several different setups depending on how the figure s are laid out and or what you want to do with it for example since you can set a scaling value that is applied to both the mesh and it s skeleton you could set up multiple presets for different scalings Any and all options on the dialog are stored with each preset 50 73 Mesh Scaling This
22. Added Invert Y Axis option for both Import and Export Added Swap Y Z Axis for Export currently disabled Increased floating point resolution in all output files version 1 0 used only 3 digits after the decimal potentially causing some rounding errors for small scale figures The above fix also fixed some zero vertex gt bone weight values Version 1 0 First release 15 73 Getting Started Installation NOTE I Ogre relies on several new Tags provided by the free IOTags plug in so be sure to download and install that plug in as well The I Ogre plug in is distributed as a zip file that contains everything needed to use the plug in 1 If Cinema 4D is running save any current work and exit the program 2 Download the appropriate zip package for your system The categories on the Downloads section of my site are set up by required Cinema 4D version So for example any plug ins found in the R10 1 or later category require at least R10 1 of Cinema 4D but will likely still work fine with R11 for example If you are using C4D R11 but don t see the plug in you are looking for in th R11 or later category then look in the next lower version category ie R10 5 or later until you find the best version for your system Note Both PC amp Mac versions of the plug in come in the zip file so you don t have to look for a machine specific version 3 Copy the zip file to your Cinema 4D
23. Clip Tag is provided by the IOTags plug in which must also be installed Before exporting you also need to drag n drop a link to this tag into the field provided on the Figure Export Tag While the Figure Export Tag must be located on the root level object of the figure to be exported the Anim Clip Tag can be anywhere in the scene the plug in uses the link to find it This also implies that you could have several of these tags set up for different uses perhaps depending on the mesh figure being exported and just link the one you want to use for a given export Bake Animation New v1 5 When Exporting animations the plug in looks for recorded keyframes on each bone joint see the next section for details If you are using IK or other controllers to animate the figure you can use this option to have the plug in export every frame for every joint whether it has a recorded key or not This feature works similarly to and effectively like the Bake Object option in the Cinema 4D time line menus but it doesn t create additional keys within C4D only within the exported file Key Reduction New v1 5 When exporting keys for each joint of each animation enabling this option will cause the plug in to try to eliminate many of the redundant keys if some joint is not animating at some point for example Reducing the number of keys can optimize performance in some applications game engines and also makes the exported files somew
24. View Objects Tags Bookmarks o DOS O OA nn DOS po o O amp A a a Ay a A a A a A A A a a A a a A A A a a a A A v note that the left arm and leg branches of the hierarchy are collapsed to keep down on the clutter but they are pretty much mirror images of the right arm and leg branches There are several things in this image that I d like to discuss now many of which will also be related and relevant to Exporting figures 32 73 The first thing to note is the very top Null Object named jaiqua This Null Object named after the root of the filename is not part of the file itself but was created by the plug in as an organizational object It acts as a handle so to speak for the newly imported figure and any meshes and or skeleton joints are created as a child of that root level Null Object You can also see two Tags on that root Null the one that looks like a dog bone is the new Figure Export Tag and the scissors cutting a film strip tag is anew Animation Clip Tag Both of these tags are supplied handled by the IOTags plug in and are created and filled in by the I Ogre Importer plug in I ll discuss both of these in more detail in the Export section but I wanted to point them out here The next object down in the tree is a C4D Joint Object named Jaiqua_Mod This represents the parent root bone of the skeleton from the jaiqua skeleton xml file the
25. at 1x and in the middle of one of his idle animations just to be different I downloaded the original files from the Psionic 3D Game Resources site and 36 73 loaded his brown texture instead of the green one And here is this figure s Object Manager layout Objects File Edit View Objects Tags Bookmarks ninja 10 Joint A Joint2 Joint3 Joint4 Joint Joint6 Joint Joint HJoint9 JointlO Joint Jointl2 Jointl3 Joint29 E Jomtl4 Jont15 3Jo0imt16 Joint Jointl8 Jointl3 Joint20 Jomt21 Joint22 Joint23 Joint24 Joint25 Joint26 Joint2 mesh0 material Skin 1 material Skin 1n this case there was only a single root level bone Joint1 so the plug in did not need to create one 37 73 The only other thing worth noting here aside from the obscure bone naming is the fact that this particular file had more than one submesh figure and sword Each submesh gets it s own set of tags and separate Skin Deformer but they share a common set of bones C4D Joint objects Using Presets Before moving on to the Export plug in I thought I d mention a little something about the practical use of option Presets While I was developing the plug in I was looking around and loading every Ogre mesh skeleton I could find for testing Some of them were saved at tiny scales and some were saved at larger scales and while most were saved with a Y is up coordin
26. at the following documentation still states that the IOTags plug in is required to provide some functionality or another the Figure Export Tag and Anim Clip Tag features in several places throughout the document for the time being just ignore those comments Once I have the new tag plug in available I ll make announcements on my site and other appropriate forums and update the documentation to reflect any changes 9 73 Revision History Version 2 3 New Features e Added support for my up coming xAlpha Channel Shader to get texture filename e Added code to allow mesh primitive objects within Skeletal Hierarchy e Related to the above if any mesh within the figure including within the Skeletal Hierarchy has no weight tag the mesh itself is now treated as a bone and the vertices of that mesh are bound to this new bone all vertices get 1 0 weighting to the bone Fixes mods Fixed Ogre3D exported lt scale gt animation key records to be absolute instead of delta values e Fixed missing faces bug if multiple Texture Tags on same mesh used same Material Finally fixed UV Baking to correctly handle offset scaling from Texture Tag During Import at least for Ogre3D mesh files the UVWTag is now added first right most tag e Changed default Material color value to the blue grey that R12 uses Version 2 2 NOTE The primary changes for this version were the massive changes required for R11 5
27. ate system I also found several that were saved with a Z is up coordinate system So what I would do was start with some default options and import the figure I might then decide that it needed to be scaled up by 10x or 100x and or enable the Swap Y Z Axis option so I d close that file and re Import the figure again with new options Once I had the correct options I d just create a new options Preset giving it a somewhat descriptive name for future use So for example I now have the following Presets Scale 1x Scale 10x Scale 100x Scale 1x Swap Y Z Scale 10x Swap Y Z Scale 100x Swap Y Z 1n my case I generally use the same frames per second and other common settings but you can make as many Presets as you need The Export plug in also has this Presets feature so I made similar Presets for the Export plug in Depending on what you want to do you might want need to re Export the figure in the same orientation and scaling as you Imported it so if you swapped the Y Z Axis when you Imported the figure you might or might not want to Swap Y Z Axis back when you Export it If you scaled it Up by 10x on Import you might want to scale it back Down by 10x when Exporting it 38 73 Ogre3D Exporting NOTE While this chapter is found within the Ogre3D section and generally only talks about exporting Ogre files pretty much all of the Background Discussion and Export Preparation sections including the Defining a Figure a
28. ation In the case of Importing the source application is CeguiMeshViewer In the case of Exporting the source application is Cinema 4D I hope all of this explanation doesn t confuse more than help if in doubt just be sure to check verify your Exported files in CeguiMeshViewer or a similar Ogre application before delivery NOTE in many cases the handedness of the figure may not even be relevant ie Symmetrical mesh textures with symmetrical animations but more often than not the figure may have animations skeletal structure set up for one hand or the other so be sure to verify this Swap Y Z Axis This option is used to help correct any mesh files that may have been exported incorrectly from 3DS Max or other apps that think that Z is up we all know that Y is up right at least it is in Cinema 4D 26 73 Skeleton Tab The Skeleton tab contains options for handling the skeleton file Import Ogre3D XML File re ML File Filter 1 Spanki Young http skinprops com Import Options Presets Last Used Apply Rename Mesh Scaling Scale Mesh Up Down by a factor of Skeleton Import Options Skeleton Skeletal nimation Add Rest Pose Doc Frames Per Secon Cancel Skeleton This option determines whether the skeleton file named within the mesh file is potentially loaded or not When the plug in parses the mesh file there may be a skeleton file name listed If i
29. d in his right hand with version 1 0 of the plug in the goal was to achieve the above orientation when loading figures into Cinema 4D Ninja facing away from the camera with sword in his right hand In order to achieve this the plug in always inverted the Z axis remember the positive Z direction in Cinema 4D is the opposite from mesh skeleton file data Accordingly when importing the Ninja figure you d get something like this image on next page 21 73 Perspective so the mesh and his skeleton are facing away from the camera in the Z direction and the sword is in his right hand so far so good With I Ogre v1 1 the Z axis is no longer inverted by default this is now a user controlled option If we Import the figure with Invert Z Axis and Invert X Axis options Disabled you d get this next page 22 73 Perspective note that he s now facing the camera on the Z axis but also note that the sword now appears to be in his left hand If the Ninja figure s bones were named something meaningful instead of Jointl Joint2 etc you would see that the sword didn t magically change hands it s still in his right hand but now the joint names wouldn t make sense his left and right arms legs would be labeled opposite of what you would expect If you would like to have the figure in Cinema 4D facing the camera like this but want the sword back on the other side and all the bone nam
30. e Mac platform NOTE these have not been thoroughly tested so please report any problems Import Previous versions of the plug in ignored the Document Frames Per Second value on the Import Options Dialog the value stored in the ms3d file was used instead This update let s you choose between using the value stored in the file or setting it manually Common Keyframing The Animation Keyframe system commonly used by all Import Export modules has been enhanced to generate and maintain more accurate stable animations In previous releases the 11 73 keyframe parser when Importing always applied a particular key reduction method to the keys being read in in an attempt to minimize the total number of keys used without affecting the animation Unfortunately a side effect of the method being used did in fact affect some animations the details are a bit technical but it depended on how the before after tangents of the curves ended up being set up The above mentioned key reduction has been disabled in this version all imported keys are now kept and created in the C4D time line This should eliminate any odd bone drift that you may have seen on Imported files before On a related note my previous suggestions instructions for using IK and other methods for creating animations turned out to be misleading and or incomplete keep in mind that I am primarily a programmer and not personally an experienced animator For d
31. ed Null Object mesh xml and within that file you d have two submeshes 1 one potentially named Cube with a material named Cube _defMat 2 one potentially named Sphere with a material named Sphere _defMat the point being that the less preparation you do and the less information you provide the less ultimate control you have over what gets Exported Before leaving this subject let s give the Exporter something more to work with File Edit View Objects Tags Bookmarks here s the changes and the resulting affects e J have renamed the null object to red_box the filename will now be red_box mesh xml e renamed Cube to box that submesh will now be named box e added a Red material to the cube box it s material will now be named referenced as Red e renamed Sphere to ball that submesh will now be named ball e added a Blue material to the sphere ball it s material will now be named referenced as Blue nothing earth shattering but at least it s a bit more descriptive a third party could now look at the 43 73 xml text file and imagine that this was likely a red box mesh with a blue ball sitting on top beside of it Figure Export Tag To allow even further control on a per figure level a new Figure Export Tag was created the dog bone looking tag Objects File Edit View Objects Tags Bookmarks r
32. ed_box_test L0 Pal Note that this tag must be placed on the root level object of the figure NOTE The Figure Export Tag is provided by the IOTags plug in which must also be installed Except that that plug in doesn t yet exist ignore the above comment for now The Figure Export Tag has several attributes to help define specify figure parameters Attributes Mode Edit User Data Y Figure Export Tag Figure Export Tag Bas 3i sh Mesh File Root Name Automatic Skel File Root Name Automatic Export Hidden Objects Animation Anim Clip Tag e Animation Ley Reduction most of these settings currently deal with exporting fully rigged animated figures but note that there is an option of specifying the root mesh and skeleton names This will let you rename the root level object that Null Object whatever you want and still have control over the output filename s You might also be sharing some skeleton file between multiple meshes you can specify the name of 44 73 the skeleton file to use in the space provided if either of these fields is set to Automatic then the root level object name is used for that file root name While this Figure Export Tag is optional for simple static meshes it is required when exporting Skeleton files with or without animations For additional information on the Skeleton section of attributes please refer to the earlier Import Examples section of
33. enience Anyway the guts frame work of the plug in underwent some fairly hefty changes in order to get all of these modules working with the same internal structures as far as I can tell so far it all seems to still be working but please let me know if I broke anything in the process NOTE The MilkShape ms3d format is a binary format and has not yet been ported to the Mac plug in The current implementation is such that porting it will be tedious but I ll likely work on that before or as I do the ms3d Export module Pricing Due to the above change of direction including multiple modules in a single plug in the pricing structure may ultimately need to change as well While I do not want to burden potential customers with getting paying for formats that they may not use the other side of that coin is that the potential user base for any one of these formats by itself who also happen to prefer using Cinema 4D as their modeler likely doesn t justify the time and effort needed to implement and maintain a separate plug in Combining them into a single tool set lets me spread the development cost by sharing common code between them and provides the end user the convenience of only needing a single license key As I write this Feb 7 09 there have been no changes to the pricing structure 13 73 Anyone who purchases the plug in at this time will also be given free upgrades for the planned smd and ms3d E
34. ent child setup described below Defining a Figure One of the most basic issues to be addressed is that the plug in needs some means and specific information about exactly what the end user artist wants exported and which elements within the scene make up that data To resolve this issue the first step is to introduce the concept of a figure The loose definition of a figure in this context is A root level object in the Cinema 4D Object Manager window By root level I mean the left most column in the Object Manager objects that do not have any parent For illustration purposes let s open a fresh scene in Cinema 4D and add a Sphere and a Cube primitive objects File Edit View Objects Tags Bookmarks Sphere f 42 73 since neither of these objects have parents the Export plug in would consider these to be two separate figures one named Cube and one named Sphere the point is that it would not save mesh data from both objects into the same mesh file Next let s add a Null Object as a parent for the two objects File Edit View Objects Tags Bookmarks de nOw at best we have a single figure mesh named Null Object by default the name of the figure and thus the filename is derived from the name of the root level parent object The above example illustrates an important point if you were to export this scene at best you would end up with an Ogre3D mesh xml file nam
35. es From file Multitudes of possible rigging setups Animations Multiple named A single unnamed Timeline at least in R10 1 animation clips from file Keyframes Sparse keyframe Assuming you can find the bones in the earlier step data per bone from above Multitudes of possibilities ie The bones file themselves may not even have any keyframes set the above is not a complete list of issues that needed to be tackled but I hope it gives you some idea When you combine the issues above with the sub goals of reasonable ease of use make sense from a work flow perspective don t impose unnecessary restrictions on the artist still provide as much flexibility as possible then the complexity of the task starts snow balling So just to clarify my purpose in explaining the above is not to garner sympathy but just to help explain some of the resulting implementation details and or limitations that you the end user artist might have to deal with 40 73 In short for some of these issues I was either faced with a lack of specific information needed and or some limitation of the plug in SDK relative to the differing nature of the source destination formats In these cases mechanisms needed to be designed and implemented to address the issue at hand which may will require some setup forethought on the part of the end user artist prior to exporting which is the topic of the next section
36. etails on this topic see this thread on CGTalk there are some good alternative work flow suggestions from experienced animators there as well The above issue led to some new options that can be set on the Figure Export Tag e Bake Animation The Figure Export Tag now has an option checkbox to allow baking keyframes See the Export Preparation Figure Export Tag section for details e Key Reduction This is an enhanced version of my original method but is only used for Export I ll try to back fit the code as an Import option in a future update See the Export Preparation Figure Export Tag section for details Animation Clip Tag You can now create more than one of these on the same object at the same time previously you d have to place them on separate objects e Vertex Weighting Starting with this update any bone joint that influences a vertex by less than 1 0 01 weighting is now ignored by the various Export modules and the remaining joint weights are scaled up down appropriately the total weight from all joints influencing each vertex is scaled to 100 see this thread in the I Ogre Support forums for additional details e Floating Point Precision One of the earlier updates increased the floating point precision from 3 digits after the decimal to 8 digits for any text based format files With this update that has been scaled back to 6 digits after the decimal ie 0 000001 one one millionth resolution
37. hange format over say FBX or Collada for these type of files It s a more rigid fixed format so there s less room for interpretation of the data and so you tend to get expected results and joint rigged vs bone rigged figures btw If you have access 67 73 to the same data in multiple formats I suggest that you test this for yourself e If you re looking for some ms3d files to mess with Psionic s 3D Game Resources has some free models you can download and some 3 party developers like Dexsoft Multimedia sometimes offer prepackaged model assets like their Black Knightress model pack in a variety of file formats this particular one comes in ms3d as well as FBX Collada etc Of course MilkShape3D supports numerous game oriented file formats so having a native path to and from Cinema 4D will give MilkShape C4D owners a lot of options I ll try to update this section of the documentation next time but hopefully the dialogs and options will make sense the earlier documentation for the Ogre3D Importer should help many features options are similar 68 73 MilkShape3D Exporting New v1 5 Along with Importing MilkShape binary ms3d files the plug in now also allows you to Export those files as well These files can either be exported as static mesh objects props all visible objects within the scene are combined into a single mesh object with no skeleton or animations or as a rigged and potentially animated Figure
38. hat smaller NOTE This process is limited to duplicate key elimination and does not perform more sophisticated key reduction methods that may be available within Cinema 4D or other software Having said that also note that e It s better than no reduction at all e It will still leave some duplicate keys in place two keys to start a span then an an additional key at the end of the span after the eliminated keys this is intentional to correct the way auto tangents are generated between transitions to from animating some joint Keyframing This topic has more to do with your actual work flow than the export process itself except that you ll need to know this ahead of time in order to get the desired export results Probably the biggest issue the plug in faces is in trying to determine just how a figure is rigged and therefore which objects it needs to be concerned with parsing in the Timeline in order to export keyframed animations 46 73 Each artist has their own particular methods for rigging and animating figures using various combinations of Nulls Joints IK Constraints Goals Controllers imported mocap data and potentially Expressions and other defomers Take IK for example It s fairly common practice to rig a figure with Joints or even Bone deformers set up IK on various sections and then add Controller objects the Controller objects are typically kept in a separate hierarchy from the actual ske
39. heir Cinema 4D serial numbers Note that the full serial number looks something like the following 10902015463 ZRNS LXZU JCFJ KWFD not an actual serial number I made it up 1n other words 11 digits shown in green above followed by 4 sets of 4 characters shown in red above Cinema 4D requires that entire thing in order to activate the program but once you enter that only the first 11 digits are shown in the Registration dialog You should never send anyone the entire serial string more specifically never send anyone the 4 sets of 4 characters shown in red above but sending those 11 digits is fine there is no way for them to use abuse them and the plug in already has access to them anyway it s a means for the plug in to verify license information provided by the Maxon supplied Software Developer s Kit that plug in developers use 7 73 Support amp Contact Information e Spanki s Prop Shop is the home site of Red i Production s products including I Ogre Riptide Riptide Pro Undertow and the AddNormals plugins as well as some Poser Products e For Bug Reports Feedback Feature Suggestions or general Support Questions and discussions please use the I Ogre Support Forums For Purchasing or Licensing Inquiries you can use this Contact Form Ifyou want to send me a PM at Spanki s Prop Shop my user name is Spanki Note that I m always interested in hearing about how
40. inema 4D after installation the registration serial code dialog will open If you have already purchased the plug in and have an I Ogre serial code you should enter that in the appropriate slot otherwise you can activate the plug in for a 30 day Free Trial by entering DEMO in all caps but without the quotes Once the trial period expires you ll have to purchase a license to continue using it You may purchase the plug in via PayPal or Amazon Payments directly from the I Ogre Product Page at Spanki s Prop Shop When you do so for prompt service please provide the following information in the extra field provided on the PayPal checkout page e Your full name e A valid e mail address e Your Cinema 4D version e Your 11 digit Cinema 4D serial code NOTE If you are using a 5 version like R10 5 I don t need that number I just need the 11 digits of the CINEMA 4D entry on the registration dialog I need all of the above information before sending your serial registration code If you forget to enter it on the PayPal checkout page or are purchasing via the Amazon Payments option you can send the registration info to me directly at typhoon at jebroadband dot com Once I have your purchase receipt and your information I will send you a serial registration code that you can enter in the Cinema 4D Registration dialog from the Help gt Personalize menu NOTE Some users have expressed concern over sending t
41. ing fixed you can Enable the Invert X Axis option This will invert all the mesh vertices as well as the bone positions on the X axis so that everything makes sense again image next page 23 73 Perspective bingo fixed On the other hand pun intended if you want to convert the figure and all of it s animations from right to left handed you could simply Import with Invert X Axis Disabled rename the bones assuming they had meaningful names in the first place and assuming they needed to be labeled correctly and re Export the file with the Invert X Axis Export option Enabled NOTE If you are inverting the Z axis when you Import so that the figure faces away from the camera then you d also want to invert the X axis when you Import to convert the figure from right to left handed renamed the bones and then Export with the invert X axis option Disabled The point being to Import with it set one way and Export with it set the other Whether it s Enabled or Disabled when you Import will depend on whether you are inverting the Z axis when you Import note that in either case any and all cases and combinations of X and Z invert options the animations will still play correctly for that orientation it s just a question of which direction he s facing and 24 73 whether he appears to be right or left handed lt Rant gt Lefties of the world unite Demand equal time Game developers think o
42. leton The artist then animates records keyframes for the Controller objects but the Joints themselves may not have any actual keyframes recorded at all If you want an exported Bone to have keyframe data and be animated you ll need to record keyframes for the objects that represent those Bones alternatively you need to Enable the Bake Animations option of the Figure Export Tag you can still use your controllers and IK and any kind of fancy rigging you can imagine but when you go to record keyframes you need to record them for the bones joints that are being moved by the controllers or whatever else is moving them NOTE The above advice may not be correct practical complete My expertise is in programming and not animating Recent testing seems to indicate that recording keyframes on joints that are also being controlled by IK or some other controller constraint causes conflict which messes up the animation There may be other methods or work flows of addressing this issue re targeting animation from one rig to another for example but my current advice known to work is that if you are using IK or some other external controlling mechanism ie Any case where you are not recording keyframes for the joints themselves then you should enable the new Bake Animations option on the Figure Export Tag This option causes the plug in to export keyframe data for every frame for every joint so it doesn t bother
43. looking for only the recorded keyframes If you do enable the Bake Animations option you might also want to enable the new Key Reduction option as well this will help compensate for cull out some of the additional volume of keys being exported 47 73 Export Checklist Hopefully the restrictions imposed for exporting are not too confusing or restrictive to your work flow In case you re totally confused by now here s a quick recap checklist tips e Give your Meshes Materials and Polygon Selection Tags typically used as Texture Tag restrictions meaningful unique names and try to avoid using spaces in those names e Root level objects in the Cinema 4D Object Manager define a figure Any meshes that you intend to end up in the same mesh file need to be children of that figure s root object e Ifyou intend to Export a skeleton file everything below here applies The figure s root object must have a Figure Export Tag e Anything you want exported as an Ogre Bone must be a child of a top level skeletal root object which is typically the child of the figure s root object but could be anywhere in the scene e Likewise any objects found under the top level skeletal root object will be written out as an Ogre Bone in other words your Controllers should not be in the same hierarchy as the joints e The root of the skeleton needs to be linked as the Skeleton Root Bone in the Figure Export Tag e Make sure that
44. ma 4D Normal Tag is generated and added to the each mesh In order to see the mesh shaded lit as it will be in Ogre3D referring to the smoothness sharpness of the polygons not the materials then you should Enable this option but due to the way the Normal Tag is implemented in Cinema 4D there are some issues to be aware of 1 Normally pun intended smooth shading is handled by the Cinema 4D Phong Tag the plug in will automatically add a Phong Tag to the each mesh The Phong Tag lets you control the smoothing angle for shading and also handles any phong edge breaks however the Normal Tag overrides any Phong Tag settings 2 Any edits to the mesh adding removing vertices or even moving them around will break invalidate the Normal Tag 3 A third unwanted result of a Normal Tag being present is that the normals are not correct during animation basically Cinema 4D provides the Normal Tag as a convenience feature for a limited set of circumstances it s not a good general solution but provides a way of importing or setting specific vertex normals There are some fairly valid technical reasons for 1 and 2 but I think 3 is just a bug oversight When this option is Disabled vertex normals are not loaded and no Normal Tag is created but a Phong Tag is always created for each mesh Without the Normal Tag you will likely see breaks in the shading of the mesh between any submeshes as well as any discontinu
45. ma 4D should be grouped combined based on material differences only ideally so instead of exporting 32 Cube primitives that all use the same material combine them into a single mesh object before exporting NOTE The game app and possibly even the engine may have batching methods implemented that will remove any distinction discussed above If in doubt check with your programmer Now after having said all of the above I ll wrap this up with the following comments e Despite everything I said above about Shared Geometry being the best most efficient option the Import plug in does not currently Import mesh files that use this option e Before implementing all of the skeletal animation code ie Exporting simple static mesh objects this option was tested and working as expected but use of this option has not been extensively tested relative to exporting animated figures ie vertex gt bone weighting e Because of the two issues above this option may or may not be enabled accessable in the first release of the plug in If it is enabled take heed of the comments above SubMesh Names This option determines whether submesh names are exported or not The game app may or may not need access to individual submesh names but it s probably a good idea to Enable this option in either case They don t take up a lot of memory and they might come in handy for future reference If in doubt check with your programmer Also note that if
46. mentioned earlier the I Ogre plug in only Imports Exports the text based xml versions of the Ogre3D mesh and skeleton file formats However the Ogre3D distribution comes with a utility named OgreXMLConverter exe to convert these files to and from the binary format NOTE The plug in will export the xml file and then launch the conversion utility but it does not wait for the conversion utility to finish before moving on it s an asynchronous process so it s likely that the plug in will finish it s tasks before the conversion s are complete Convert XML to binary Enable this option if you want the plug in to automatically convert the xml files into binary Converter Enter or browse to the location of the OgreXMLConverter exe utility here 57 73 Ogre3D Binary gt XML Converter On the IOgre plug in menu there is a new entry labeled Binary gt XML Converter Window Help CHaCoT ools Cinemaddsdi InterPoser Pro EIN Resedit Riptide Pro Undertow gt Help Visit Web site this option will allow you to easily convert one or an entire folder full of mesh and or skeleton files to the text based xml format or vise versa 1e It can convert one or an entire folder of mesh xml and or skeleton xml files into the binary format Single File Mode When you select this menu option a dialog will open Binary lt gt XML Converter Operation e Single File Multi Files Converter
47. n currently at least does not read those Just to clarify the above assuming you have both Mesh reference and Skeletal Animations options enabled a mesh reference smd file will be created and one or more animation smd files will be created So if you had been Importing smd animations with the Append option set on your figure then it would already have a properly filled in Animation Clip Tag and each animation clip listed in that tag would be exported to a separate animation smd file using the name of the clip as the name of the file The Export Options Dialog is fairly straight forward so I ll cover that in a bit but before I do so I want to cover an issue topic with the Figure Export Tag related to the Skeleton Root Bone and the Export Skel Root as Bone option among other things As a refresher you should re read the Export Preparation section of this document in the Ogre3D section but basically the Figure Export Tag has several attributes to help define specify figure parameters see image next page 63 73 Attributes Mode Edit User Data Y Figure Export Tag Figure Export Tag sh Mesh File Root Name Sutomatic Skel File Root Name Automatic skeleton 1 Root Bone t Skel Root as Bone Export Hidden Objects Animation Anim Clip Tag Bake Animation Key Reduction most of these settings currently deal with exporting fully rigged animated figures but note
48. n you should select the figure to be exported from the drop down list to the right NOTE Because this option may or may not be available depending on whether figures are found in the scene being Exported the Last Used Preset the initial options set when the dialog opens each time may have this option Disabled but available for use so be sure to double check which option is set before clicking OK In other words you might Export some figure You might then export some scene that has no figures in it forcing the All visible scene objects option to be set stored in the Last Used Preset The next time you Export you might have figures available and you might even see the one you want listed in the drop down menu but if you don t Enable this option you ll end up exporting a static mesh Axis Adjustment s These two options Invert X Axis Invert Z Axis operate exactly the same as the same options for the other file format modules of this plug in NOTE There is currently no Swap Y Z Axis option available in either the Import or Export modules for the ms3d file format since MilkShape uses the same Up axis as Cinema 4D 70 73 Figure Tab This tab has options that are only related to exporting rigged and potentially skeletally animated figures Export MilkShape binary ms3d File ort Filter 2009 by Keith Spanki Young F http 2skinprops com Export Options Preset
49. n Root Bone ie the Figure s root object is rotated at all A work around would be to move the Skeleton Root Bone outside the Figure s root object hierarchy after doing any rotations but prior to exporting if you plan to use the Swap Y Z Axis option when Exporting Vertex Buffer Assignment Vertex Buffers were mentioned briefly back in the Shared Geometry section They basically represent some batch of vertices to be processed This set of options gives you a finer level of control over which vertices Vertex Normal Vertex Texture Vertex end up in which Vertex Buffers You can either group any two or all three of them into the same buffer or give each their own buffers Check with your programmer to see if there s a preference 55 73 Skeleton Tab There s not much to set on the Skeleton options tab just a single option currently skinprops com Export Options Pre Last Used Apply Rename Up e Down by a factor of Skeleton E xport 0 ptions Skeletal Animation See the Figure Export and Anim Clip Tags for additional options Binary Conversion Convert XML to binary Converter Skeletal Animation This option determines whether or not animations are written to the skeleton file The other options for the skeleton are more specific to each figure and are handled by the Figure Export Tag and the Anim Clip Tag so be sure to fill those in as well 56 73 Binary Conversion refer to previous image As
50. nabled a Rest Pose is created at frame 1 on the Timeline This is basically the mesh in it s natural undeformed un animated state with no animation applied to the joints of the skeleton If this option is Disabled no Rest Pose frame is created which may or may not be useful my advice is to leave this enabled Doc Frames Per Second This allows you to set the frame rate for the newly created document Note that this option will not speed up or slow down animations that are imported the animations are specified in numbers of seconds of length it merely determines how many frames to squeeze into each second The animation may be smoother with more frames per second to interpolate the keyframes with but the overall timing of the animations remains roughly the same NOTE In the initial release at least the length of animations is slightly off off by one frame In other words if the animation is supposed to be 1 second long and you have set this option to 30 frames per second then the first frame will be frame 0 and the last frame will be frame 30 instead of frame 29 which gives 31 total frames for that animation making it 1 30 of a second too long 28 73 Layers Tab The final tab on the Import Options Dialog is the Layers tab Red i Productions Presents 40 gre AL File Filter anki Young Import Options Presets Last Used A pp ly Mesh Scaling Scale Mesh Up Down by a fac
51. names of the bones come from the file Worth noting here is that in this example that was the only bone in the file that didn t have a parent In either case the important concept here is that there is a single handle to the figure s Skeleton also known as the Skeleton Root Bone in the Figure Export Tag As far as the I Ogre Export plug in is concerned any children of that object and optionally that object itself will be written out as an Ogre3D bone This will be discussed further in the Export section Before moving on to the next example let s take a quick look at the mesh part of this figure 1n this case there is only a single mesh object Ogre3D submesh and the name once again comes from the mesh xml file The mesh has several tags on it which from left to right are e Weight Tag e Phong Tag e UVW Tag e Normal Tag Texture Tag e Polygon Selection Tag set up for and used by the Texture Tag the only one worth commenting on right now is the Weight Tag which is filled in with links to the appropriate Joint objects for this mesh and also maintains the vertex weight information for each of those joints The Skin deformer child of the mesh uses the info in the Weight Tag to deform animate the mesh 33 73 MrBones figure The next example is a skeleton figure that I got from the WorldForge project To avoid naming confusion I changed the filename from skeleton
52. nd Export Checklist subsections apply to the other formats provided by the plug in as well Background Discussion When implementing the Import plug in the task at hand was relatively straight forward and well defined attempt to re create a Cinema 4D representation of an Ogre3D figure mesh skeleton maintaining as much information as possible and allow some transformation options in the process Of course there were some sub goals such as having the user interface make a certain amount of sense while still providing as much flexibility as possible From a slightly different and simplified perspective the source of the data is was the Ogre3D mesh and skeleton files and the destination of the translated representative animated figure is Cinema 4D Of course for the Export plug in the goals are similar but the source and destinations are reversed so the task moves on into e how where to find the needed data in Cinema 4D e how to translate transform that data into a format that Ogre3D understands e accomplish both of the above in a relatively straight forward and easy to understand way e accomplish all of the above while still providing flexibility in options e accomplish all of the above within any limitations of the Cinema 4D plug in SDK the overriding difference between implementing the Import plug in and the Export plug in is that with the Import plug in the source data mesh and skeleton files is relatively fixed
53. nema 4D Tags to help track some data and or options for Export purposes the Group Region and Export Mask tags This new I Ogre plug in as well as another plug in under development introduce two additional tags the Figure Export Tag and Anim Clip Tag both of these are documented in later sections Since multiple plug ins share common tags any programming changes to those tags has to be done in multiple projects and even then the actual tag sub plug in that gets loaded will depend on which plug ins the end user owns and which order the parent plug ins get loaded the shared sub plug ins use the same IDs and Cinema 4D won t load the same ID twice Because of the above the user might be looking for the Export Mask Tag for example within the Riptide Pro menu when it might actually now only be found under the I Ogre menu I Ogre may not actually provide use this tag right now but it might in the future The idea behind the IOTags plug in is to move these tag sub plug ins out of the file filter plug ins and just have them all provided and maintained in a single external plug in As of this writing I have not yet published the IO Tags plug in An initial pass has been done but I d like to spend a little more time thinking about and refining the interaction with the other plug ins before posting it and also note that this might eventually lead to a name change In the meantime please note th
54. ng Tag allows you to set a smoothing angle and also takes phong edge breaks into account and will also handle the case where a Normal Tag exists I recommend always having a Phong Tag present instead of relying on the fall back case where the plug in generates averaged normals Almost every object generator in Cinema 4D comes with a Phong Tag by default so this is not something you need to worry much about just don t delete them For further information about Normals in Cinema 4D please refer to the Importing mesh files section on Normals UV Coords Also known as UVW Coordinates uv mapping and or Texture Vertices or some combination of those terms this option determines whether uv mapping info for you mesh gets exported or not Shared Geometry This option may take a little explaining an Ogre mesh object at it s most basic form is made up of Vertices and Faces The vertices define the shape of the mesh and the faces describe how to connect the dots vertices with a series of triangles to describe the surface of the mesh In the mesh file the Face information is always written written to the submesh section of the file However there are two different methods for writing the Vertex information 1 As Shared Geometry when this option is used the vertices for all submeshes within the file are written into a common pool within the mesh level section of the file 2 When the above option is not used
55. of objects which would just be that Skeletal Root Bone if it s written as a bone are added to the list with null Parent Names it s a root level bone that has no parent The potential issue that was addressed was this it s possible that the user had joints bones listed in the Weight Tag that were not in fact ultimately found under as a child of the Skeletal Root Bone object This could also mean that they had an invalid Parent Name unless they happened to be root level hierarchical objects in the Object Manager Anyway the plug in now makes a corrective pass through the final bone list and fixes up any issues before exporting Export root bone axis are now adjusted for global Cinema 4D adjustments In the previous versions if the parent of the Skeleton Root Bone ie Like the Figure s root null object had been rotated at all then the animations would be out of whack With this update in that final corrective pass mentioned above the plug in now also corrects the 14 73 axis of the any root bones to fix this issue NOTE This correction does not work as expected when the Swap Y Z Axis option is used on Export Import Submesh names are now more cleanly and clearly tied to the material being used on that mesh when no submesh names exist to override the name Version 1 1 Bug Fix Fixed a crash bug when exporting multiple meshes figures at once Added Invert X Axis option for both Import and Export
56. om Binary format to the text based XML format XML Binary When this option is selected only mesh xml and or skeleton xml files in the selected folder will be processed As the name implies they will be converted from text based XML format to the Binary format Mesh Files When this option is selected only mesh or mesh xml files in the selected folder will be processed Skeleton Files When this option is selected only skeleton or skeleton xml files in the selected folder will be processed Both When this option is selected both mesh and skeleton or mesh xml and skeleton xml files in the selected folder will be processed Converter Enter or browse to the location of the OgreXMLConverter exe conversion utility here preferably the release build 60 73 VALVe Source Importing New v1 3 Editor s Note This section of the documentation is not yet complete in the meantime here are a few quick tips The SMD Studio Model format files are used by the VALVe Source SDK which comes with and can be used to create mods for VALVe s games The smd files typically come in two flavors e Reference files the reference files reference is typically but not always part of the filename contain the mesh geometry triangles section along with the base positions and orientations of the rigging bones skeleton You should import one of these first e Animation files
57. ous uv mapping anywhere the uv mapping vertices of two polygons get split to form a seam 19 73 So the question of whether or not to Enable this option depends on what you intend to do with the imported mesh and whether or not you plan to re Export the results e Ifyou don t plan to add remove or move vertices around for example if you just want to scale the mesh or do some uv adjustments or just paint some new textures In BodyPaint or modify the animations then I d recommend Enabling this option to get the normals in place for re Exporting just ignore the bad shading when playing animations the normals should still be good in it s exported Rest Pose e If you do plan to do any mesh edits then you re going to need to fix the normals before exporting anyway likely welded some seams in the mesh which may also require re weighting the joints etc so you might as well Disable this option or possibly delete the created Normal Tag later if as needed just remember that the Normal Tag overrides the Phong Tag so if the mesh starts looking wonky as soon as you start editing the mesh it s because the Normal Tag is now invalid Materials This option determines whether Cinema 4D Materials and Texture Tags get generated NOTE As of v1 1 of the plug in the plug in makes no attempt at reading any Ogre3D formatted material files so no material colors and textures are set up just blank place holder Materials
58. r 1 and start the animation frames at frame 0 although there are usually options to disable creating the rest bind pose frame I recommend always leaving that enabled Mesh reference This option enables disables exporting the figure reference smd file As mentioned in the Import section as well as the introductory part of the Export section there are two types of SMD files reference files contain the mesh geometry information along with the skeleton bone orientation and linkage information By convention the name of the reference file should normally have reference as part of the name The plug in uses the same mesh file naming rules as all other I Ogre Export modules so you should either have the root level figure object the thing with the Figure Export Tag on it named appropriately or set the Mesh File Root Name to Manual and fill in the name there Skeletal Animations This option determines whether animation smd files are created When enabled each animation clip listed in the Animation Clip Tag will generate a separate smd file using the name of the clip as the filename Axis Adjustment If the figure in your Cinema 4D scene is facing the camera along the Z axis however they got that way then to convert it to the orientation expected by VALVe Source Engine games Half Life Team Fortress etc you should enable both Invert Z Axis and Swap Y Z Axis options Export Paths This
59. re specifically the first root level object in the Object Manager that has a Figure Tag on it A future enhancement may allow you to select which figure to apply it to e Ifyou import an animation file when there is no valid figure in the scene the plug in will just create a new animated joint rig with no mesh But keep in mind that the animation files do not 61 73 contain rest pose information so the rig will be in some state of animation at every keyframe Ifyou just want to import a rigtanimation go ahead and import the reference file first anyway you can always delete replace any meshes that are attached to it and then redo the skinning weighting with the new mesh Due to the differences in native coordinate systems between Cinema 4D and the Source Engine if you were to import a figure with no transformation options set Flip X Axis Flip Z Axis Swap Y Z Axis it would be loaded into the scene taking a dirt nap face down and facing away from the camera along the Z axis To get the figure into something easier to work with in Cinema 4D the default Import options have both Flip Z Axis and Swap Y Z Axis options enabled I d suggest leaving them that way but just remember to set those same options when Exporting erm there is no smd or ms3d file Export module s yet but you ll likely want to at least Flip Z Axis when exporting to the other formats I ll try to update this section
60. riented Digital Content Creation Tools to Cinema 4D artists and game developers There are other more generic exchange formats available such as FBX and Collada but because of the more general nature of these formats they are not always well suited for game development and or may have quirky or non optimal implementations with the Cinema 4D built in filters Just as one example the FBX format is heavily dependent on which version application created the file and the built in Importer always only creates Bone deformers for rigging instead of the newer more flexible and efficient Joint rigging system While there is much diversity between the actual file structures of the Ogre VALVe MilkShape formats all 3 of them are fairly well defined work exclusively with triangles and support skeletal rigging and animations I Ogre acts as a bridge translator between these formats and removes most distinctions between them from the user s perspective wherever possible all Import modules create a similar Joint rigged figure representation within Cinema 4D and all Export modules are designed to work with that structuring representation Until now Cinema 4D has lacked support for many of the game oriented file formats I Ogre is designed to fill that void allowing developers and artists more flexibility and options in their production pipeline End User License Agreement This package and contents are Copyright by
61. rrent plans to develop a m3_ Export module While it s had fairly extensive testing on the PC specifically R12 64bit it has not been tested in any other configuration most specifically on the Mac although the code is in place to do the necessary byte swapping it just hasn t really been tested use at your own risk and or feel free to report any issues Fixes mods Added support for Ogre3D singleton section records Fixed Animation Export R12 only issue for all modules Fixed keyframe Import for smd files Fixed restframe Import issue for smd files Removed the PolygonizeDocument scene from ms3d Export Updated all Import modules to check for and eliminate degenerate triangles Cleaned up Animation Import for all modules to be more consistant removed cross animation contamination Beefed up Animation Export support for various scaling issues Ogre3D files now contain scale records Fixed keyframe bug in all Export modules Added additional BonelD count checks for ms3d file Export limit is 128 skinned bones Bone gt Vertex weight clamping raised from 1 to 1 10th to handle additional cases C4D Luminance channel is now mapped to from emissive instead of ambient for MilkShape 3D files Version 1 5 MilkShape3D New Feature Now Includes MilkShape3D binary ms3d File Export module Mac plug in Both the Import and new Export modules have been ported to and are now avallable on th
62. ry selection dialog and the selected options actions will be performed on files within that directory folder that meet the specified criteria NOTE This plug in spawns the specified application utility passing it the filenames that meet the specified criteria but this is an asynchronous process the plug in does not wait for the file to be processed before moving on to the next file which means that if you have dozens or hundreds of files that meet the criteria in the selected folder you could potentially end up with dozens or hundreds of spawned processes To avoid any trouble try to avoid these situations by either refining the criteria do the mesh files in one pass then do the skeleton files in a separate pass or by physically dividing your files up into smaller folders 59 73 On a similar and related note the debug versions of executables like the OgreXMLConverter exe utility run considerably slower than release versions of the same executables Whenever possible be sure to use the release version to help keep the spawned processes from getting backed up the quicker they complete their task the quicker they go away allowing more memory and processing power for newly spawned processes Binary gt XML When this option is selected only mesh and or skeleton files in the selected folder without a xml extension will be processed As the name implies they will be converted fr
63. s Last Used Apply Scaling esh Up e Down by a factor of Figure Options Mesh Skeleton Skeletal Animations Rest Bind Pose Frame Cancel Mesh This option determines whether the mesh geometry vertices polygons etc gets exported or not Skeleton This option determines whether the skeleton rigging gets exported or not NOTE As implied by the above two options it s possible to export only the mesh or only the skeleton of a figure or both the mesh and the skeleton see also the Skeletal Animations option listed next but if you don t enable either option there s nothing to export so the plug in will display a message and abort 71 73 Skeletal Animations This option determines whether skeletal animations are exported or not Note that this option is only relevant and available if you are also exporting a Skeleton Rest Bind Pose Frame When Exporting the plug in needs to know which animation frame to set the document to that will put the figure into it s Bind Pose ie The default undeformed non animated mesh By convention all Import modules create this at frame number 1 and start the animation frames at frame 0 although there are usually options to disable creating the rest bind pose frame I recommend always leaving that enabled 72 73 The End 73 73
64. s Last Used Apply Rename Mesh Scaling Scale Mesh Up Down bya factor of Mesh Import Options Uy Coords Normals Materials Cancel Presets The top section of the dialog will let you create select an unlimited number of option Presets This will allow you to easily switch between several different setups depending on where the file originated and or what you want to do with it for example since you can set a scaling value that is applied to both the mesh and it s skeleton you could set up multiple presets for different scalings Any and all options on the dialog are stored with each preset Mesh Scaling This section will let you scale the mesh and it s skeleton up or down by a fixed amount Note that the scaling value is specified in whole numbers not fractions 18 73 Mesh Tab refer to the previous image The bottom section of the dialog has several Tabs the Mesh tab will let you set various options to apply to the mesh being imported UV Coords This option determines whether UV Texture Coordinates uv mapping will be loaded or not Normally you d want this Enabled but you may have some reason to not want uv mapping from the file Normals This option determines whether Vertex Normals are loaded or not This option probably requires further discussion When this option is Enabled and assuming Normals are found in the file vertex normals are loaded from the file and a Cine
65. s the SMD Import module clears that option when importing a figure so you would need to enable it if you want it for some other format Export Additionally the SMD Export module will ignore the Export Skel Root as Bone option IF the name of that bone ends with _SkelRoot 64 73 The Point is If you are creating new work or otherwise want that Skeleton Root Bone exported as a bone make sure that the name doesn t end with SkelRoot or it won t be exported Export Options Dialog The Export Options Dialog is where the general Export options are set Export VALVe Source SMD File Red i Productions Presents smd File Filter h Spanki Young SKINPprops com Export Options Presets Last Used Cua Apply Rename Mesh Scaling Up e Down by a factor of General Export Options Rest Bind Pose Frame File Filter Swap Y Z Axis Export Paths Mesh Animes Cancel 1n this case all the options are on one page so it s pretty straight forward In fact most of the options are similar to if not exactly the same as the options found on other Export and Import modules dialogs so I ll just hit on a few highlights below Rest Bind Pose Frame When Exporting the plug in needs to know which animation frame to set the document to that will put the figure into it s Bind Pose ie The default undeformed non animated mesh By convention all 65 73 Import modules create this at frame numbe
66. se to mention at this point except that e The options dialog was largely borrowed from my Riptide Pro and other plug in s and is a work in progress some options may not do anything or work as you expect yet Having said that you won t break anything by messing with the options so feel free to experiment e The good news is that of the 3 formats at least partially implemented so far this is the only one that can actually import textures and color values for materials just be sure that Cinema 4D can find the textures in it s Texture Paths preferences or that you set up the Suggested Path option to point to where they are Also keep in mind that PC x64 versions of Cinema 4D can t load png files so if you end up with all black textures be sure to check that as a cause Unfortunately the ms3d format doesn t have any provision for splitting animations into separately named animation clips so the Animation Clip Tag will get set up with just a single default animation that encompasses the entire time line Before Exporting to Ogre3D format for example you ll probably want to edit that if you purchase or download animated ms3d files they typically come with a text file that lists the animations by keyframe times you should be able to use that as a guide e Just as an aside I think you ll find that ms3d formatted files imported with this plug in will become the preferred file exc
67. section allows you to pre specify folders for the Mesh reference and Animation smd files Note that currently you will still get a confirmation dialog for each but it will already have the folders specified in these two fields preselected so you can just click OK if everything looks good NOTE Files in those folders that have the same filenames as ones being saved are over written with no warning currently you can use these fields to set up some project folders and then create a new Preset for each project for example 66 73 MilkShape3D Importing New v1 3 Editor s Note This section of the documentation is not yet complete in the meantime here are a few quick tips First off as mentioned in the Overview Section the MilkShape3D ms3d format is a binary format the others are text based The reason this is important is because binary data is formatted differently between the Mac and PC Intel systems so the code that reads writes those files needs to do some translations sorry for the inconvenience but I ll get to that as time permits tip if you re a Mac guy wanting to read write ms3d files you can help speed up the process by showing your support ie Purchasing the plug in and or at least voicing some interest NOTE While not extensively tested as of v1 5 the Import and new Export modules have both been ported to the Mac platform Moving on there s not a whole lot el
68. skeleton mesh and skeleton skeleton to MrBones Here he with his Y Z Axis swapped he was exported with Z as the Up axis scaled up by 100x and in mid punch animation the rigging of this figure is quite different from most others I ve seen Note that there is no bone joint connecting the hip to the thighs and there is also no bone joint connecting the knee shin to the foot 34 73 In the previous example there was a single root level bone bone with no parent in this figure there are 5 bones with no parent and additional translations are used to get everything working correctly Here s the C4D Object Manager setup for this one File Edit View Objects Tags Bookmarks E za gt lt meshD materialO Skin E Lo EN YA a A Y a a Y A a A a A a a Y EN a A amp again note that the two thigh bones the two foot bones and the spinel bone were all root level bones so in order to have a single skeletal root bone a Null Object was added by the plug in the 35 73 highlighted MrBones_SkelRoot object and all the other bones were parented to that The other thing worth pointing out is the name used for the mesh object since there were no submesh names in the mesh xml file the name was generated by the plug in Ninja figure It seems that no Ogre example is complete without the obligatory Ninja figure so here he is scaled
69. t sees this and this option is Enabled the plug in will also attempt to import the xml formated version of the skeleton file NOTE As mentioned elsewhere if you intend to have the skeleton loaded you ll need to have already converted the binary skeleton file to the text based skeleton xml file before importing the mesh If this option is Enabled and the file is found loaded a Cinema 4D Joint based rigging is created for the mesh and the vertices of the mesh are weighted to the appropriate joints A Figure Export Tag supplied by the IOTags plug in will also be created and filled in for you 27 73 NOTE In Ogre3D terminology the skeleton is made up of bones so I may use the terms joint and bone interchangeably but just be aware that I m not talking about the Cinema 4D Bone Deformer unless I make it clear that I am There will be more discussion on this topic later If this option is Disabled the skeleton file will not be loaded and the other options on this tab are also disabled not used Skeletal Animation If this option is Enabled any animations found in the skeleton file are loaded and set up in the Cinema 4D Timeline An Animation Clip Tag supplied by the IOTags plug in will also be created and filled in for you If this option is Disabled no skeletal animations are loaded and the options below it are also disabled not used Add Rest Pose If this option is E
70. this document but basically you need to drag n drop a link to the root bone of the figure s skeleton into the Skeleton Root Bone field Anim Clip Tag One of the other issues related to differences in data formats is skeletal animations An Ogre file can list multiple animations for each figure but in Cinema 4D there is only one Timeline NOTE R11 introduced some new motion clips and non linear animation editing tools but I haven t investigated them thoroughly yet this plug in is designed to work with R10 or later When Importing animated figures the individual animations are loaded end to end in the Timeline so that the first animation might go from frame 0 to frame 30 then the next one starts at frame 31 etc This information along with the names of the animations is stored in a new Anim Clip Tag Here s a look at the interface after loading the Ninja figure from the earlier Import examples Animation Clips Define Animation Clips to be Exported Name Attack Rename Start OF Insert Delete End Name i Rename Start Insert Delete End Name Attack3 Rename Start Insert Delete End Name Backflip Rename Start Insert Delete Fred Add Clip 45 73 this Tag is automatically created and filled in for you when using the Import plug in but if you are Exporting a new animated figure you ll need to add one of these and fill it in manually to define your animations NOTE The Anim
71. tor of Select Layers to be created Joints Skin Deformer Normal Tags this tab has options for creating Cinema 4D Layers Here s an example result in the Layer Browser File Edit ma Name ight Tags Skin Deformers ARARA Z loints a Phong Tag Normal Tags a e Tags 2 Material Tags Texture Tags New Mesh FI www ww we ew Ms des Sa Sal Sal Gee Sal Sau Gal Ga FFAA 29 73 Importing skeleton files If you only want to Import a skeleton skeleton xml file without the mesh you can just select that in the file dialog You ll still get the same Import Options Dialog described in the previous section but only the options that apply to skeletons will be relevant used 30 73 Import Examples Jaiqua figure Let s take a look at a couple of Import examples The first one is one of the sample meshes included with the Ogre3D distribution called jaiqua 1n this example the mesh was scaled up by 10x and is shown here in mid sneak animation NOTE The blank Material and Texture Tag on the mesh were created by the plug in but I manually loaded the texture into that material after importing to help show the joints There is also a bone C4D Joint object that goes from the origin over to her hip bone but I have that hidden in the editor otherwise it looks like she has a large pole up her rear 31 73 Here is the result in the Cinema 4D Object Manager File Edit
72. utomatically converting Exported xml files to binary using the OgreXMLConverter exe utility that comes with the Ogre3D distribution but there is no such option for Importing so it must be done manually prior to Importing the process typically results in a mesh xml and or skeleton xml file s When you are ready to Import a mesh file more specifically a mesh xml file you start by activating the I Ogre Importer menu option found in the Plugins menu Window Help Execute Last Plugin User Scripts InterPoser Pro e Dare Exporter MslO Resedit Riptide Pro mc Binary lt gt XML Converter Undertow Help selecting that will first bring up a standard file dialog Select the mesh xml file to be imported NOTE The plug in only reads the text based xml files but if you select a mesh binary file by mistake the plug in will tack on a xml extension and try to find load that instead NOTE A current limitation of the Import plug in is that it does not import mesh files that were saved whether from this plug in or some other app with the Shared Geometry option 17 73 Import Options Dialog After selecting the file to load the Import Options Dialog will open with the most recently used options set Import Ogre3D XML File Red i Productions Presents S A E ge R Ogre3D XML File Filter B hi 009 by Keith Spanki Young http skinprops com Import Options Preset
73. utside the box add variety to your game give us lefties some left handed characters and monsters lt Rant gt joking aside I am left handed btw I d love to be able to choose my character s right left handedness in every RPG FPS game I play even if the tightly scripted cut scene animations interactions between two figures weren t updated to account for lefties for most game time animation it won t matter to the game engine whether I m swinging a sword with my left or right hand and in many most cases the meshes don t even need to be duplicated just the skeletons and or animations Anyway these options give you a handy way to easily convert skeletons animations from one side to the other Wrapping up due to the differences in Ogre Cinema and depending on whether you want to simply work on produce a figure facing the camera or actually want to convert it s handedness there is some room for confusion about how to set these options so here s some charts to help Importing Invert X Axis Invert Z Axis Preserve Ogre orientation Preserve Ogre handedness Disable Enable Preserve Ogre orientation Convert Ogre handedness Enable Enable Convert Ogre orientation Preserve Ogre handedness Enable Disable Convert Ogre orientation Convert Ogre handedness Disable Disable In the chart above Preserve Ogre orientation and Preserve Ogre handedness are both in reference to how the
74. which should be sufficient for most purposes and makes the output files smaller Version 1 4 e New Feature Now Includes VALVe Source Engine smd File Export module Be sure to read the notes section on this feature for some important details e Ogre Export Fixed memory leak when Exporting Ogre3D mesh files depending on some export options SMD Import Fixed some issues related to Figure Tag updating if you imported a second 12 73 reference mesh the Skeleton Root Bone link on the previous figure document was being cleared by accident General some general clean up of a few dialog menu option strings labels and some other internal maintenance Version 1 3 New Features New Focus Major Internal Changes While the original plug in was written to only support the Ogre3D mesh and skeleton file formats with this update it now also supports importing VALVe Source Engine smd files as well as importing MilkShape3D ms3d files Export modules are planned for both of those as well The new focus of the plug in is providing a set of Game Oriented Digital Content Creation Tools something Cinema 4D is lacking currently Because these formats are fairly specific in nature they are often the best file exchange formats to use when dealing with game oriented content The original plan was to provide these as separate plug ins but I have decided to go with the swiss army knife approach for added value and conv
75. xport modules when they re ready as well as any minor update and bug fix releases this current release marks the 3 free update btw Ultimately the pricing as well as future features and or the development of additional file format modules will be governed by the amount of support sales the plug in receives so if you d like to show your support and get in while the Introductory Pricing is still in effect Feb 7 09 now s your chance Ogre Import Depending on exactly which options were set uv mapping was sometimes reversed completely wrong on every triangle fixed Fixed a few potential initialization issues along with some general code clean up Version 1 2 New Feature Binary gt XML menu plug in added New Feature Swap Y Z Axis is now Enabled as an Export Option Presets a few default options were updated Export Resolved potential root bone parent issue when exporting The plug in makes 2 passes when adding Bones to the list to be exported In the first pass it loops through the joints listed in the Weight Tag on the each mesh and if that joint has actually has weights for the mesh it gets added to the list along with it s Parent Name the name of the object that it s a child of In the second pass the plug in starts with the Skeleton Root Bone linked in the Figure Tag and optionally adds that and any objects found under it As it does this the first hierarchical level
76. you have a rest pose frame available on the Timeline where the meshes and skeletons are in their natural non animated state e If you want the mesh and or skeleton filenames to be something other than the name of the figure s root object name you can set that information up in the Figure Export Tag e Ifyou intend to Export skeletal animations in the skeleton file everything below here applies e Make sure that your joints bones have keyframes recorded just recording keyframes for your Controller objects is not sufficient e Create and fill in an Anim Clip Tag e Make sure that the Anim Clip Tag is linked in the Figure Export Tag I d also recommend Importing a few figures and studying the results in the Object Manager and or referring back to the Import Examples section of this documentation The layout created by the Import plug in is perfectly suitable for the Export plug in to handle though not strictly required in all aspects it serves as a good example Note that the information tracked by the new Tags discussed above is the type of information that s likely to be more specific to each figure links to actual joint objects and specific animation clip data etc The more general Export options will be set in the Export Options Dialog discussed in the next section 48 73 Exporting mesh files If you haven t already done so I suggest that you read the previous sections starting with Export Preparation Once

I/Ogre User Manual - Spanki`s Prop Shop

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