www.enchantedage.com

Hrm, I'm having some trouble with shader file exports. This is actually a kwExport-problem, but since that site is more or less down this seems to best spot to comment.

I want to store all my model shaders in a common location, Content\Shaders. This seems impossible with the newest version of the exporter since it always copies the shaders to the export location and directs the model to use those shaders. I guess I could simply put all models in the same location and thus avoid the problem, but I'd prefer not to since it's a cluttery way to do it and I'm automatically adding models and setting properties (i.e. ForceSkinnedShader for all models in the ModelsSkinned dir) depending on where they're found.

Any workarounds for this? How do you guys usually structure your content?

Brilliant library. Been using the regular skinned mesh one from apphubs but it's failed on my newest character so this has saved my life. Could I ask how one would go about controlling the bone positions programmatically? I'm intent on writing an animation editor in the near future so any pointers would save me a lot of reverse engineering. Thanks.

Hi!

First of all, great job for the libraries!

I'm building a game engine with your animaition component, and it works well so far in my project. Unfortunately, the ModelDraw objects can't work with my Skybox. The Skybox is rendered firstly, it work nice itself. But, as soon as ModelDraw.SceneDraw() or ModelDraw.SceneDrawTransparent() executed, the skybox just disappear.

I found that a ModelDraw must use ModelDraw.Attatch() to connect with the IScene, otherwise, it can't be rendered correctly. Is that leads to the problem? How can I fix it?

Thanks!:-)

Hi, thanks for the great projects!
I'm trying to animate my model, I've gotten her to show up in the AnimationViewer, but when I press the } key to go to the next animation, the text at the bottom changes to show the anim name, but my model doesn't move. Anyone have a solution to this, or a suggestion for where to start debugging?
If it helps, my model also looks ugly b/c I didn't give her any effects, would that be a problem? Is there a way to just use BasicEffect?
I really appreciate any help!

Hi, I wanted to see if my model works with your library, but I'm not seeing it get drawn.
All I did was take your sample project (KiloWatt solution) and added my model into the modelViewer content w/ the correct processor. When I run it, I see all the correct info about my model in text at the bottom, but can't see the model. I think she may be off camera, but how can I test this theory?
I've tried scaling her to various different sizes and looking around using the camera controls, but I need a more precise way to tell. Is there a way to see the world space location of her so I can look there and know for sure? Has anyone encountered other cases similar to this?
I appreciate any help very much!

Hi man,

Just to let you know I tested your code with a 3ds max object that has a bunch of sub objects in it.

One of them is animated.

The animation worked, but the relative position of all the sub objects was wrong so it all ended up as a huge blob.

I guess your content importer is trashing the matrices.

Easy work around though, I just split my model into two, one static and one animated.

Cheers

Stainless

Hello,

I'm trying to put out an update for a game published with KiloWatt animation under XNA 3.0. Since upgrading to 4.0, I'm getting the following error at runtime when trying to load the model content:

"Cannot deserialize KiloWatt.Base.Animation.Animation.Tracks because it is both null and read-only."

I've noticed that the compiled version of the model is currently about half as large (320 KB now vs. 654 KB when compiled under 3.0). Debugging the AnimationProcessor has been difficult so far, so I can't tell you exactly what's missing.

Any help or direction would be appreciated. Thank you!

EDIT:

I actually figured it out. It appears that the project upgrade routines failed to bring over AnimationWriter.cs (and apparently no compiler errors are given if it's missing). I added it back in and all is right with the world again. The lesson here is one we should all know already...don't trust Microsoft! :-)

Hey,

In September I ported your library to XNA 4.0 for the use in a project that I'm starting full time development now. I had the application up and running a while ago, and just recently wrote a couple wrapper classes to help work KWA into my framework. I remembered seeing a skip in the run animation of the archer asset packaged with the animation viewer, and didn't realize it was because of the one second animation limitation, until I just made my own run animation that was exactly one second.

So, I decided to come back here and read your post again, and somehow I managed to miss the fact that you posted a patch ages ago. I remembered seeing it when I first downloaded KWA, but I figured for some reason that that was for a previous version. I just sat down with winMerge and managed to come out of the ordeal with only about 6 or 7 errors, even with the slightly different code for XNA 4.0. I got them all solved, and building just fine, but now I'm getting crashes for a previously working model.

I crash in Animation.cs on AnimationTrackDictionary Read(ContentReader input, AnimationTrackDictionary existingInstance) the crash is a ArgumentException telling me that the existingInstance dictionary has the same key added already. I trap for that error, then it crashes when i == 9 (in a 40 some odd bone model) on input.ReadObject, simply telling me "Error loading " with a ContentLoadException.

I've been poking around with a couple ideas. I find this very curious, and I'm thinking its possible that its just my content project acting strange (I have 4 of them in a 14 project solution) so I'll keep looking into that and debugging; however if you have any insight you can offer me, I'm all ears.

Thanks for the great library, and thanks for your time. Cheers.

1. how can i manipulate specific bones scale (for example to make my character's head bigger), and bones transform to connect them to ragdoll?
2. how can i obtain mesh vertices list in current frame?

TIA
Przemek

I'm also using the updated version of the KiloWatt animation system which seems to break the code in the AnimationViewer. I re-created the project successfully and got it running in XNA 3.1, but I'm also having the same issues that anjdreas is having.

I instinctually changed
loadedModel_.AnimationInstance = blender_;
to:
loadedModel_.CurrentAnimation = blender_;

but I'm not sure what to do for the following two lines:
loadedModel_.SceneDraw(dd);
loadedModel_.SceneDrawTransparent(dd);

I also tried 0 and 1 as parameters, but it seems as though it's expecting to be called from a shader. Is there an updated / fixed version of the AnimationViewer or does anyone actually know how to resolve this issue? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

I have a problem with loading the model.

Error message:
Error 1
'KiloWatt.Base.Animation.ModelDraw' does not contain a definition for 'AnimationInstance_' and no extension method 'AnimationInstance_' accepting a first argument of type 'KiloWatt.Base.Animation.ModelDraw' could be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)

//  create a blender that can compose the animations for transition
blender_ = new AnimationBlender(loadedModel_.Model, loadedModel_.Name);
loadedModel_.AnimationInstance = blender_;

I didn`t change anything in the AnimationViewer.cs. If i comment the line with the AniamtionInstance the program starts and i can choose the model, but it will not be displayed.

maybe you know that problem.
thx anyway,
HU

Hi, I want to ask if I could have the archer model in .3ds for reference purposes. I just want to compare with what I have on my end. Thx!

After I updated the files, I found myself having to recreate a new animation viewer project. But this I checked that the animation processor seems to be missing from the drop down menu.

HI
My project has a model with more than 72 bones.

Is this a hard limit or is it possible to increase it by recompiling the source?

Will this work? If not, do you have any recommendations on a good way to do this?

Thanks!
Pragya

Is there a way to change Pixel shaders using kW... i haven't used it yet?

i just want to give different effects to the skinned models

How do I tie an animation to a specific key-press, ie. press Space, play punch animation.
I'd like to know how to load animations by name, is it anything like this code I used in an Ox Engine project ?

 else if (keyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Space))           
 {
   Component.AnimationController.PlayClip(Component.SkinnedModel.AnimationClips["Punch"]);                                             
 }

I've been picking at the Animation Viewer, trying to get my head around kilowatt. Does anyone have any simpler code? I just want to start with the minimum required to load my model and play its animations.
I like to declare my models individually, rather than use the folder path like the viewer.

Also when I tested my model in the viewer, I got some strange animations, probably left over from Blender. How do I use the exclude animations field? (I assume that's what it's for)