Arma Toolbox for Blender - Arma 2/3 exporter script

[Alwarren 2767]

inside the motionbuilder rig in the FBX2RTM folder they have all the default stances saved nicely, i wonder if you could somehow transfer those to blender (its humanIK so i doubt it) but im still a noobie with blender i only use it because the 3ds max toolbox is no longer supported by its creator and the documentation is gone.   i know there is a VBS3 rig for blender i wonder if it uses the same skeleton and has the stance's for rifles/pistols/binocs/etc saved in it as well...

 

either way, if your looking for a good base for your animation check the FBX2RTM filebank in motionbuilder (you can get it for free off the autodesk education site)

 

You can't get them in by import. The only thing that I found workable was what I described above (see my previous post in this thread), .i.e. try to match it as closely as possible. Not the best way, but it works.

[wantafanta 13]

You can't get them in by import. The only thing that I found workable was what I described above (see my previous post in this thread), .i.e. try to match it as closely as possible. Not the best way, but it works.

rats, i wonder if Bohemia can supply a version of the rig for blender... i doubt it but since they have one for VBS3 that id assume uses the same skeleton perhaps it might be worth posting in a seperate thread to try to get a dev to respond

[Ranwer135 308]

With regards to animating while we're discussing it, Is it possible to adjust the 3rd person view camera? (I noticed that the camera is set halfway of the character)

I do know that the ATbx and the BVH rig does not have a camera bone, but is there some way I could apply the "camera" or "HeadCutScene" (from the RTM examples) to all of the frames In O2, without having to apply 1 frame at a time until e.g. I reach the 210th frame? :huh:

[Macser 776]

You're correct. They don't have bones for the camera memory point.

 

Try experimenting with the rigs. Add in a bone named camera at the correct location relative to the example character. You can save the edited rig separately. The rtm component of the toolbox only requires an armature and inputted keyframes.

 

My armatures and Al's toolbox have no "technical" connections. 

 

You could use a modified rigify armature if you like, or go with a completely custom version. As long as the target model and rtm have matching bone information you're good to go.

 

An rtm edit may not get the results you want. Or could make things worse.

 

It sounds like a config or model issue. As far as A3 goes, that would be outside my area of knowledge.  :)

[Macser 776]

If people are used to animating walk/run cycles the way I do, as opposed to "on the spot", then this might be of some use. I think it's relevant here because the toolbox is the only way I create animations these days. In fact I no longer involve O2PE/ Object builder in the animation process at all.

 

But it requires a small "workaround" to get things working correctly. This is briefly outlined in the video.

 

[sama 67]

Hi all

 Every now and then i get this when trying to export to  p3d.Im sure its something ive done,but i cant seem to find it.Any ideas?

[Alwarren 2767]

I think this message occurred when you have nothing selected during export. It's a bug in the script, I *really* need to update it...

Solution is to simply select some object and try again, but be aware that you might need to restart Blender afterwards since it keeps the file locked.

[sama 67]

Thanks for the info,tho ive had to "rollback" to earlier saves to get the p3d exported.Ive tried to reproduce the error but cannot,it seems random.I thought it had something to do with changing the reslod numbering,but it seems not.Even selecting a part of the object and trying to re export dosent resolve.

[beastxjason 0]

so nice thanks for sharing

[Pif-Paf 1]

ALWARREN you DID A GREAAT JOB ! !! Ijust made my first anim export from blender 2.76b to RTM. I still have much to learn concerning arma moding...

By the way, since you say you always work with the last blender version, did you check if ATB can create an arma proxy in blender ? Iget an error at doing this, (but I'm so new at this that it might well be a personal mistake)

[Alwarren 2767]

Yeah, I'm sorry I have been neglecting this project for a while. I have a newer version internally that handles proxies differently - the vertex groups I used have a very limited maximum length and might run out of characters, so I rewrote proxy handling completely.

 

I really have to get the new version out, but since it has some radical changes, I will need to write a new user manual or make a YouTube video on it, and I lack the time I'm afraid.

[Pif-Paf 1]

I really have to get the new version out, but since it has some radical changes, I will need to write a new user manual or make a YouTube video on it, and I lack the time I'm afraid.

 

About this point I sent you a private message via the forum message system ...

[Miroslaw Kowalski 54]

Is it possible to IMPORT .rtm-files into Blender? I have one of the armarigs in blender and I want to have a stance to start with that is not the regular T-stance but I don't know how to import such a stance...

[Macser 776]

Not with the toolbox unfortunately. But Al did describe one of his method's for setting up a reference.

https://forums.bistudio.com/topic/145290-arma-toolbox-for-blender-arma-23-exporter-script/?p=2899784

 

Quote from Al:

"The only thing that would be possible is to recreate a skeleton but this would not have any sort of control rig, and be practically useless."

 

I'm just musing here, but if you mean the imported skeleton would be bereft of any controls, that's not much of an issue. As long as the rotations and locations of the "bones" are there, you can constrain a control rig to follow the imported skeleton. In much the same way as you would a BVH.

[DSabre 2332]

Thank you very much for making this Alwarren! It's a great tool, ty for sharing.

[torndeco 128]

Very nice toolkit

Ran into issue while exporting RTMs, were the order is sometimes messed up.

Eventually i got tired trying to work around the bug & fixed the bug in RTMExporter.py

Fixed it by commenting out the following line

    #keyframeList = list(set(keyframeList))

Its been awhile since i messed around with python, but i am assuming the issue is that sets are unordered map
So even though you are sorting them beforehand, you aren't guarantee the order will still be the same afterwards.
Worse case the code isn't removing any duplicate frames

[Macser 776]

I can only talk about my own experience. I've never had any issues with frame ordering. So far I've probably done close to 300 rtms. Any problems I've had were usually of my own creation. :)

[torndeco 128]

Yeah i was doing some animations before & i encountered the same issue were the frames were outof order in ObjectBuilder.
So i assumed i messed up, plus when i tweaked the animation the issue disappeared.

Then i started to work on importing some animations into arma atm (multiple animations all contained in a 0-2400 frame range).
I encountered the same issue afew times again but only with certain frame ranges, but i could replicate it 100%.
So i went looking in the code to see what could effect the frame order.

--------

Anyway i pointed out the code thats responsible for the issue and explained why i think its happening.
Also gave a quick dirty fix, that disabled a line of a code that removes duplicate frames.
Its easy enough to recode that line if its needed, but i dont believe its needed (am new @ animation etc).

--------

The funny part the closest person i could find to report that issue is yourself @ 
https://forums.bistudio.com/topic/145290-arma-toolbox-for-blender-arma-23-exporter-script/?p=2713436
I wasn't able to use auto-timing feature in ObjectBuilder, because it messed up the RTMs on me.

[Macser 776]

I was making assumptions about auto-timing. In reality it was an error on my part. But in any case that had no bearing on the issue I was posting about.

 

The exporter takes the transforms and rotations as they are. But the Arma engines expect the animations to be "zeroed" out. No movement on the root/center bone. I was using O2pe, Object builder's predecessor, to do this. Now I don't bother with it. I take care of it myself inside Blender and go direct to game.

 

Frame ordering problems, as far as I'm aware, have never been an issue.

 

Thanks for posting your findings and work around. It might come in handy if the issue pops up for myself or anybody else using the toolbox. :)

[Alwarren 2767]

 

Very nice toolkit

Ran into issue while exporting RTMs, were the order is sometimes messed up.

Eventually i got tired trying to work around the bug & fixed the bug in RTMExporter.py

Fixed it by commenting out the following line

    #keyframeList = list(set(keyframeList))

Its been awhile since i messed around with python, but i am assuming the issue is that sets are unordered map

So even though you are sorting them beforehand, you aren't guarantee the order will still be the same afterwards.

Worse case the code isn't removing any duplicate frames

 

 

Commenting this out is not a universal solution. This line was meant to prevent duplicates keyframes. What needs to be done is to sort the keyFrameList by time index afterwards.

 

I'll fix it; I really need to get the new version out, but I don't feel like writing lengthy documentation at this point, so I might just put it out there without documentation.

 

In any case, thanks for the heads-up.

[Macser 776]

I can't speak for anyone else, but I'd rather have an undocumented version than not have anything. If it works then that's what matters..

:)

[Heinrich Kramer 172]

but I don't feel like writing lengthy documentation at this point, so I might just put it out there without documentation.

working exporter in itself is more important than the documentation, we'll figure it out one way or the other :-)

[anaximandross 34]

I'm back..again.

 

I went to use the A3 toolbox for blender to export my model to O2 with the P3D option. However, my model, which starts off as this, comes out as something totally different once it is exported into Arma 3. The O2 model is the same: here. 

 

Further, my textures are not loading in A3, but one issue at a time. 

 

 

EDIT: It appears that O2 is cutting off the top half of the model, loading it, and then drastically increasing the size. I have no idea how to fix that problem.

[Macser 776]

I think the best place for this question would've been Al's dedicated thread. But it's also possible it's nothing to do with the toolbox.

 

That looks like a scaling issue due to transforms not being applied to the object. Have you already done that?

By that I mean, while in object mode, select the object and hit Ctrl-A. Apply scale. Or to be sure apply all 3. Location, rotation and scale.

 

Then export.

 

You can confirm the object is ok for export by looking at the properties panel (N key). The values should be zeroed out for location, rotation and scaling while in object mode. If not, you'll have problems with exporting.

 

Always make any changes in edit mode to keep things tidy. Applying the transforms and rotations is only necessary when you make changes to the object. As opposed to the mesh data. Which is what you change in edit mode.

 

Hopefully that's the source of the problem. :)

[anaximandross 34]

I'm pretty new to this (I started yesterday) so I'm not entirely sure what I need to do. More specifically, how much do I need to scale the object?