PDA

View Full Version : Point Oven Workflow (Currently stuck with EMDL)

solagratia77
04-21-2007, 06:29 PM
Dear all...

I have an animated and textured character and
I am trying to generate a baked mesh via PointOven.

Instead of selecting the entire character,
I selected only 'to be rendered mesh' then I
checked three options in the Point_Oven_Baker PPG
-1> Export MDD
-2> Export LWO
-3> Export Point Oven Scene file

And when I open up a new scene and import the
exported PSC (Point Oven Scene) File,
PointOven generated the baked mesh with no problem. Great!

But here comes my trouble,
As I have mentioned, I have already textured the character.
So when I exported the character as LWO all the materials
were lost. So I had to look into EMDL export option in the
PointOven PPG.

But whenever I try to export the selected meshes as EMDL
XSI would not let me do it becuase it is under a model node.
Instead it's asking me if I want to export the entire character instead.

Since I did not want to export the entire character, I un-parented the
selected mesh from the Model and tried to export again

Well.. Even if the export stage passes without error after un-parenting,
when I open the exported PSC, the placement of meshes are all over the place.

I have spent so much time on this... I feel so silly now.

I looked into PointOven because
I wanted to make my scenes lighter and did not want to carry
all the heavy cahracter rigs in the lighting and rendering stage.

But I just have no idea how to solve this porblem and
I would love to hear about your PointOven Workflow...
It doesn't has to be PointOven as long as I can make my scenes
lighter.

I would very very much appreciate any help on this.
Thank you

-J
SolaGratia
toonafish
04-21-2007, 10:01 PM
So, you're using PointOven to bake a character to an MDD to render in XSI ?

In that case all you have to do is bake an MDD, delete the rig, and load the MDD with the Poin Oven MDD Reader.
solagratia77
04-22-2007, 12:50 AM
Toonafish, Thanks for the reply.
So, you're using PointOven to bake a character to an MDD to render in XSI ? Yes!

delete the rig, and load the MDD How should I go about deleting the rig?
Freeze first then Delete all the Envelope Operators first?

And when I load the MDD, if I have 20 peices of meshes
should I load it all seperately and not use the PSC file?

Abswer to these questions help greatly...
Thanks again.

-J
SolaGratia
toonafish
04-22-2007, 10:58 AM
ah, you have lots of seperate meshes.

In that case select all the meshes, merge them ( RMB + Alt click and select "merge") and bake an MDD from the merged mesh.

Then freeze history on the result and load the MDD.

You can then delete or hide the old models and rigs.

EDIT: Oh, and don't forget to transfer materials and UV's when merging.
solagratia77
04-22-2007, 12:47 PM
Hallelujah ! It Works !!
Thank you sooo mcuh toonafish !!
:applause:THANK YOU :thumbsup:

When I first tried to merge the meshes of my character before
it wouldn't let me do it. So I had a wrong impression that
I can't merge an enveloped meshes.

But after reading your post I tried it again and I found out that I had
a couple of surface meshes.
So de-selected and merged the character. And it works now !

Wow! this work flow is absolutely wonderful!!
I guess I can re-time the animation of my character
by plotting shapes and re-generating MDDs
propagate MDDs to duplicates of character to
create non-uniform animation.... and I guess
possibilities are endless...

As you can see I am excited ! Hallelujah !
I thank you again toonafish !! THANK YOU !!

-J
SolaGratia
toonafish
04-22-2007, 06:40 PM
hehehe, glad I could help. I was just as happy and surprised when I found out that this workflow worked when I had to bake an MDD to render in LW.
CGTalk Moderation
04-22-2007, 06:40 PM
This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.