Animations Not Importing Properly.

[Mig8806]

When I import .bmd files, for some reason the animations get messed up. For example when I import Epona from TP her legs kick out in weird directions, as shown in the .gif below. Not sure why this was happening and I was wondering if there is a way to fix it.

Edit: This happens on all animations, not just this one.

[spamzilla]

I'm having the same issue here. Sometimes the whole front end of the horse will distort as well.

[Mig8806]

I'm having the same issue here. Sometimes the whole front end of the horse will distort as well.

Glad to know I'm not the only one. Let me know if you find a way to fix it.

[niacdoial]

oops sorry for the delay can you let me look at the animation curves for those legs, please?

[spamzilla]

Sorry for sounding like a noob but what are 'animation curves' exactly?

[niacdoial]

oh no worries. gotta learn at some point, right? (also it wouldn't be the first time I word something weirdly and it makes it impossible to understand)

In short, it's a way to see the different motions in the animation as "amount of X as a function of time"

here are some instructions to reach it (...at least on blender 4.0, tell me if you use another version and I'll try to write new instructions). I'll assume you almost never used blender before, just to be safe.

• the UI of blender is composed of what I call "panes" with distinct roles. by default, there's the 3D view, the timeline, the outliner (the tree-like view on the top-right) and the properties. In the corner of each pane, there's a small icon that allows you to change it to a new type. (want four timelines for some reason? you can!) You can also resize the panes if you want.
• first, you want to go to the top of the blender window, and click on the "animation" tab, which will change what panes are visible.
• then, in either the outliner or the 3D view, select the armature (looks like a stick figure in the outliner, and as diamond-things in the 3D view.)
• then, look for the top-left corner of the timeline-ish pane, and switch that one dropdown-with-text from "Dope Sheet" to "Action editor"
• at the top-center of the pane, a new dropdown-or-create thingy appeared. click the dropdown and select the animation you want to see.
• now, in the 3D view, select the bone (the diamond-like thing) that represents the twitchy leg.
• in the action editor, there should be a bunch of lines that appear, from "X location" to "Z scale". use Ctrl-click to select the ones that say "rotation"
• now, select any pane, and change its type to "graph editor".
• finally, move around and zoom as you please, with the scroll wheel, Ctrl-scroll, Shift-scroll, or by moving the scroll bars (you can move the tips of the scroll bars to zoom or unzoom)
• profit

[spamzilla]

I think what you're looking for might be something like this? :

[niacdoial]

hm... I might have a few ideas of what's happening. tell me: does the position of the leg look good at frames 0, 7 and 14? also, as a hacky workaround, does this problem disappear when, in the select-file-to-import dialog, you enable the "disable axis conversion" option on the right side of the dialog?

[spamzilla]

Yes, frames 0, 7, and 14 do appear to be correct. "Disable axis conversion" seems to only rotate the horse by 90 degrees though. The mispositioning of the leg is still present.

[Mig8806]

Sorry for the delay, but here is my animation graph:

Edit: This is for the "hs_run_slow" animation. Just figured I'd note that its for a different animation than @spamzilla's graph.

[niacdoial]

ok, so good news: I think I know exactly why this is happening. (long story short, there are several ways to express the same rotation in an "Euler XZY" representation, and for some reason frame 7 uses a different way than frames 0 and 14) bad news: I don't know where it happens yet. also sorry Mig8806 but I can't really see anything on that graph, everything is too cramped together horizontally.

...Also, Can I also ask either of you if the problem exists on blender before 4.0? it seems weird that I get two users with the same bug on the same basic feature after so much time, and so close to each other

[niacdoial]

actually, do tell me if the newest commit fixes it (there's a new option on the right side of the choose-file-to-import dialog) that should be enabled for this

[spamzilla]

I know this is github but I actually have no clue how git works.

[niacdoial]

no problem lol. I'll just... have to guess what part you didn't understand and give an explanation

If it's a matter of not understanding what I meant:
commits are just... snapshots of the code that has been written. in other words, each of them stores "what the code of this program looked like at that point in time".
so what I mean by "the newest commit might fix this bug" is "On my own computer, I made some changes to the code which might fix this bug, then took a snapshot of the code, and uploaded that snapshot to github for anyone to download"

in other words, "try downloading BleMD again, the newest version has changes that might fix this."

...hope that helps, if this was your question

[spamzilla]

The new option makes things much worse. Everything is rotating like crazy!

[niacdoial]

...I see. What about now? actually scratch that it's worse on my end as well

[niacdoial]

what about now?

[spamzilla]

The horse's legs are still flailing around and it also appears to be walking in reverse.

[BeezBumba]

@Mig8806 Can I ask how you imported the BMD files with animations? I'm trying to do the same thing but like link instead?

[niacdoial]

@BeezBumba the animation files need to be placed in a specific way with respect to the bmd file (see: https://github.com/niacdoial/blemd?tab=readme-ov-file#how-are-the-the-animations-handled, or more accurately https://github.com/niacdoial/blemd/blob/648205a3c173d5f4c6806d5eba30f20024ba5386/README.md?plain=1#L80 since the markdown rendering is borked right now)

[BeezBumba]

When I extract the AlAnm.arc file(has link's animations) it gives me 2 folders that have bmds bmde and bmdr I'm also not sure which bmd is in charge for all of the bcks.