*Help? - Exporting bone animation 3DS MAX

#1

Hi all!

I’m new to this forum, so I am not sure if the answer to this question lurks somewhere around here. I’ve tried googling it but came up empty handed. Also pardon my ignorance as i’ve just finished school for computer animation, so I’m relatively new to this technical stuff…

The Goal
To be able to animate a skeleton (which will be exported as .san) from an existing rig, so that it can be imported into another file with the same skeleton (but different/updated mesh). Reason being that the mesh may be updated or changed, but we dont want to re-animate the scene.
Aside: Is it possible to “reference” a model/mesh in a rig, so that the changes made to the model will automatically update in the rig file?

Any other suggestions on getting around to being able to have an editable rig is greatly appreciated!

Thank you everyone!

#2

I can’t help you with the .san stuff as I’ve never tried to export using this file extension. It might be helpful to explain why you’re trying to export. For a game engine etc?

As far as referencing is concerned. Yes, you can do this with Max depending on which version you are using. 3ds Max calls this Xref (external referencing) and it is totally broken in Max 2009. I know it’s been updated/fixed in 2011, not sure about 2010 but looking in the Max help files, Google will turn up a few easy to follow tutorials.

#3

Hello

If there are to structural changes to the rig between the models, you should just be able to save out an animation only file and si,ply apply it from one rig to the other. Animation file simple contain rotation( and sometimes postion) data on bone joint pivot points; and heirarchy layout of rig. So no change in rig should mean you can transfer the data.

Mr. D

#4

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