GameGuru MAX - Bug - Animated Model Not Always Coming In With Animation (See Last Post)

[MonkeyFrogStudio]

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This is a continuation of this request found here:

https://github.com/TheGameCreators/GameGuruRepo/issues/1564

but with some new information that I think may help. I am able to get models into MAX using the FBX format that keep their animations now. Not sure what changed, but it seems to be working. However, the problem is that they won't import as STATIC. Here's an example model:

door_9.zip

When I import the model, I check the "Static object mode" box and set the "Collision" type to "Box". However, when I bring the model into a scene and twirl down the General area, it shows Physics and Physics is set to Physics On. I can set that to Off, but there is no choice for Static, there is no Static Mode. Under Collision Shape there is no option for Polygon for a collision type, for example.

So, the primary issue here seems to be that these animated models are not coming in as Static even if the Static box is checked and, once in MAX, there is no way to change this and you are stuck with it.

There should always be a way to change a model to Static if the end-user wants, imo.

[MonkeyFrogStudio]

See Last Post

I may have found the issue and it's not quite what the title suggests - it's not about the model being static. After all, this is an animated door.

What I found is that I was using Blender's Actions to created named animations for MAX:

This allowed me to make one animation called Open and one called Closed. The good thing was when I imported this model into MAX, it recognized the two animations and had both channels set up for me. The bad thing was, there was not collision in the model for me no matter what I tried.

I then tried to reanimated the model by creating one, long animation of 60 frames (1-30 for open and 31-60 for close). This imported into MAX fine, but I had to create the two named animation channels for the Door behavior to use. But this door, once in MAX, had collision.

[MonkeyFrogStudio]

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Sigh. This is getting frustrating. I thought I had this figured out and had a way to get these simple animations into MAX, but now it's not working at all. I've followed the steps that worked previously and the model imports into MAX, but MAX tells me that NO animations were found! If I bring the FBX back into Blender, the animation is there. Here's the latest file:

Door_13.zip

I've included the .blend file as well as the FBX file with this one.

[MonkeyFrogStudio]

See Last Post

Here's a "door" that animates in MAX. It's just a cube, but the animations come into MAX:

Door_test_2.zip

You can use this to compare to the other file (above) to see why one comes in with animation and the other does not. However, all the files that do bring there animations into MAX have another issue. The door animation ends at frame 60 in Blender. But when the animation comes into MAX, it shows there are 76 frames. I've tried various export settings, but I cannot get 60 frames to come into MAX.

The above ZIP file also contains a .blend file, too.

[MonkeyFrogStudio]

Okay. I believe I've found out why sometimes my animated models come into MAX without animations sometimes and other times they don't and I think it's a bug with how MAX is importing them.

Apparently, when MAX is importing a model, it is looking for NAMEofMODLE|NAMEofANIMATION. If it doesn't find a match, even if the model has an animation in the file, the MAX importer will tell you that no animation was found. So, let's say I create a cube in Blender. Blender aptly names this Cube. If I then animate this to move and call that animation Move, then export that out, MAX will see that when imported and in the importer's animation field it will read - Cube|Move. All's good. However, if, when I'm in Blender, I decide to change the name of Cube to something else, like Door, then we end up with the issue and MAX will not find the animation. Why? Because, for some reason, MAX will still see Cube|Move but the geometry is named Door. It doesn't matter if the geometry was named Door before being animated or after. MAX somehow gets the animation as Cube|Move but sees the geometry as Door. The end result is MAX thinks that Door has no animation, so none is offered to the end-user. The funny thing is, I can re-import the model back into Blender, change the name of Door back to Cube, re-export out and bring that back into MAX and now MAX will see the animation! Why? Because the geometry is named Cube and the animation is named Cube|Move.

This is a problem. When working in our 3D modeling program, we will want to rename our geometry so it makes sense to us. Let's say I am modeling a sci-fi door that has three parts that open in three directions. I might name them door_top, door_left, and door_right. But MAX might end up looking for Cube, Cube01, Cube02 or whatever.

Here is a ZIP file with two FBX files in it:

Cube_Amim.zip

One is called Cube_Anim.fbx and the other is Door_Anim.fbx. They are both exactly the same. The only difference is that the name of the geometry of Door_Anim was changed from Cube to Door. Other than that, they are exactly the same file. But if you import them into MAX, MAX will only find the animation for Cube_Anim.

[MonkeyFrogStudio]

Solution in Blender:

It's not enough to rename the top level stuff, but you have to twirl down and rename the actual geometry within, too. I should have known.

[MonkeyFrogStudio]

Sorry about all this. I think, in the end, this is user error. It was quite the process figuring out what was going on, though.

EDIT - In fact, the reason MAX was importing my 60 frame animation as 76 frames was also my fault. I needed to change the FPS in Blender to 30 FPS before exporting. It was set to 24.x or some such. Now it matches perfectly.