Author Topic: FBX Animation converter  (Read 7868 times)

SuburbanKnight

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FBX Animation converter
« on: 2014-09-16 19:23:15 »
Hi there,

I'm trying to build a (very) basic tool for converting external animations into the FF7 animation format. I'm by no means a programmer, but I'm hoping to stumble along dissecting the Kimera source code and botching the bits of it that I understand together with stuff from the Autodesk FBX SDK into some form of horrible, horrible C++ program.

Anyway, I need some help understanding stuff. Right now, I think I understand that FF7 animations are stored in a sort of frame-by-frame convention, with alpha, beta and gamma rotations for each bone in every frame.
As opposed to this, the FBX format, from what I've gathered, stores rotations in keyframes, and there are function curves between these keyframes.

I'm just having trouble working out how I'd obtain individual rotations for each frame from this.

Any ideas? Am I at least right about the FF7 animation? This is my first attempt at anything like this, so any pointers at all would be most appreciated!
« Last Edit: 2014-09-16 19:41:23 by SuburbanKnight »

obesebear

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Re: FBX Animation converter
« Reply #1 on: 2014-09-16 20:19:26 »
You are right about the ff7 animations.

SuburbanKnight

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Re: FBX Animation converter
« Reply #2 on: 2014-09-16 22:10:32 »
Cheers! That at least clarifies that so I don't have to worry about it for now.

I think I'm making headway in that I've realised I can use the FBX sdk to get a rotation matrix from a node at any given point in 'time' , so I'm going to assume that means seconds and try to sample them every 1/15 of a second and see what happens. I can almost guarantee it won't work, knowing my luck with programming.
« Last Edit: 2014-09-16 22:31:37 by SuburbanKnight »

cmh175

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Re: FBX Animation converter
« Reply #3 on: 2014-09-16 23:13:57 »
This would actually be an incredible tool, almost on par with the kimera even. The animations could use plenty of work to smooth them out and make them more realistic, but other than fixing ground height and stuff they're a nightmare to edit. Granted kimera wasn't really designed with that in mind. There was a bit of talk about this in the Team Avalanche forum but I'm not sure which thread it was.

Mayo Master

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Re: FBX Animation converter
« Reply #4 on: 2014-09-17 16:40:04 »
I don't recall much of a discussion on this topic around Team Avalanche forum, to be honest. Maybe we barely brushed the subject as we contemplated the possibility to run the game at 60 fps (SpooX testing FMVs in Junon). I think there are more knowledgeable people outside TA when it comes to animations.

Hellbringer616

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Re: FBX Animation converter
« Reply #5 on: 2014-09-17 18:28:19 »
I think there are more knowledgeable people outside TA when it comes to animations.

ObeseBear or NFITC1 would be your best bet, NFITC1 i think knows the technical aspects you're looking for. If he doesn't, i fear that no-one does haha

cmh175

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Re: FBX Animation converter
« Reply #6 on: 2014-09-17 19:18:53 »
I don't recall much of a discussion on this topic around Team Avalanche forum, to be honest. Maybe we barely brushed the subject as we contemplated the possibility to run the game at 60 fps (SpooX testing FMVs in Junon). I think there are more knowledgeable people outside TA when it comes to animations.

It was mentioned in passing mostly, just the idea of being able to edit the animations outside of kimera. Aali and Borde discussed it a bit though. I think it was on Timu Sumisu's new Vincent model thread. This was also like a year ago.

~Found it. The conversation started here -> http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=14461.msg203301#msg203301
« Last Edit: 2014-09-17 19:22:06 by cmh175 »

nfitc1

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Re: FBX Animation converter
« Reply #7 on: 2014-09-17 19:39:13 »
ObeseBear or NFITC1 would be your best bet, NFITC1 i think knows the technical aspects you're looking for. If he doesn't, i fear that no-one does haha

Not me. I'm terrible at the animations. I tried writing a prog for them and I couldn't get even one frame to display properly.

KnifeTheSky77

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Re: FBX Animation converter
« Reply #8 on: 2014-09-17 21:22:57 »
You are right about the ff7 animations.

Woah! you can't just change your avatar on us like that and act like nothing happened

I managed to get kimera to compile in its archaic IDE, I have no idea how hard it would be to upgrade the code so that it would work in a more modern environment-- visual studio2010-2013? I could poke and prod at it if you get stuck

I wish I had time to commit to QGears. If that system were done, all of our modding problems would be born out of a system we have compileable source for instead of the original hacked together engine we  have little understanding, debugging or control of.  :(

nfitc1

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Re: FBX Animation converter
« Reply #9 on: 2014-09-17 21:58:01 »
I managed to get kimera to compile in its archaic IDE, I have no idea how hard it would be to upgrade the code so that it would work in a more modern environment-- visual studio2010-2013? I could poke and prod at it if you get stuck

I tried to do that, but it requires lots of code conversions as OpenGL interface changed drastically in .NET.

SuburbanKnight

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Re: FBX Animation converter
« Reply #10 on: 2014-09-17 22:04:15 »
Kimera is written in VB6, which was immediately superseded by a different language (VB.NET) and is no longer supported by anything modern. I've tried updating the program but it introduced thousands of compiler errors I couldn't understand, so I gave up. I do have a picture of what it'd look like if it was updated though. Shame nobody can use it :P

My end goal is to eventually write something with a nice modern GUI that improves upon Kimera, although I don't see that happening for a while. Baby steps.
First step is to get one object to rotate in one direction, once. This may take a while!

obesebear

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Re: FBX Animation converter
« Reply #11 on: 2014-09-17 22:12:20 »
Sure hope you can pull this off.  Kimera can do a ton of things, but it has needed an ground-up rebuild for many years now.


P.S.  my old avatar was too outdated.  Haven't been in the military since 2011.

KnifeTheSky77

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Re: FBX Animation converter
« Reply #12 on: 2014-09-17 22:12:57 »
I assumed this after I downloaded an .exe off MSDN that I thought was a vb6 to .net migration tool, it actually extracted a 900 page book on the subject to my desktop.

The baby steps are the most important of all, good luck -I think we could all really use a better animation tool

nfitc1

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Re: FBX Animation converter
« Reply #13 on: 2014-09-18 01:30:28 »
It'd be best to not write it in a Microsoft-controlled language. That way it's easily ported to other systems. The best idea is to make a lot of implementing classes for the data objects and have a separate module handle the 3D rendering. Then there's not five-thousand entry points for the graphics libraries if it needs an update.

KnifeTheSky77

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Re: FBX Animation converter
« Reply #14 on: 2014-09-18 02:14:04 »
I couldn't agree more. Microsoft's suite, although easy to use, quick to develop on and has pretty great knowledge support, is very proprietary and the licensing is outlandishly expensive --you couldn't imagine what my work pays for it.

I have done zero research on this so I may be totally wrong here. I know that QGears has converters from ff7 native data to some kind of ogre format, I wonder if it may be easier in the long run and more conducive to QGears development to make a converter from ogre back to ff7 and use an ogre animation tool. 

Borde

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Re: FBX Animation converter
« Reply #15 on: 2014-09-29 23:00:35 »
If you have any doubts about FF7 animations I'll gladly answer them. I know battle animation can be a bit of a pain in the ass with their bit-level encoding.

Anyway, you can find the format explanied here: http://wiki.qhimm.com/view/FF7/Battle/Battle_Animation_%28PC%29

I wish you a luck with this project. It would do a lot of good.