Strange as it may seem I am trying to get this software to use a model of a CAT (not a human!) as the imported character to be animated, and using video of a real cat to track the animations. However, I'm failing at step 1. I can not import the character. It tells me "Can not find root joint of the character". I even went so far as to export the default character from the iPi software, and rig that skeleton to the mesh of my cat model, so that all the right joints would have all the right names in all the right places. Still no dice. So I added a joint at the center point of the floor of the mesh and named it "root". Still no go. Can anyone tell me how to convince this thing to accept my model as an imported character please? I already tried using the default human and it very clearly wants the model to match the subject, and my subject is a cat, and I will NEVER get my cat to stand in a T pose, it would break his arms. So I thought instead of trying to get my cat to stand in an unnatural T pose, I would make a default character that is already in a natural cat pose. Only I can't get it to import. Can anyone help me? PLEASE?

Wow, that's just crazyiness! I admire that you tried it though. :)

Seriously, I think iPi DMC assumes the human form and movement, so I 't think it will be challenged in understanding what the cat is doing, just as the cat found it difficult to assume a humanoid T-pose.

(FYI, I'm using iPi Studio to animate cats too, but then again they're cartoon cats.) :p

G.

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Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

hehe Thanks for responding. Using it for cartoon cats sounds really interesting too.

Did you import your own model? Or are you using the default skeleton? That's really where my roadblock is, I can't get it to import another skeleton, even though it says it can. It keeps telling me it can not find the root joint on the character.

God bless you,
-Sparkling

For our short film, I'm using the default iPi skeleton, and retargeting the .bvh to a custom rig imported to Animeeple. Then I export an FBX from Animeeple to LightWave, save that as a .lws, and then I load the motion envelopes from that scene to my final rigged and weighted character in another Lightwave scene. The process may seem a little convoluted but I have special rigging considerations for the final character rig that wouldn't make sense to iPi or Animeeple, so this workflow works pretty well for me.

In a future project I'd like to try using custom rigs in iPi DMC, but for now I want to keep things, well, 'simple' I guess. :)

G.

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Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

Ah I see. I exported the rig as a BVH and imported that to Milkshape.

Not working for me like I wanted it to though. LOL

-Sparkling