So I bring in a target character in FBX, no problem... can export bvh no problem... but with FBX export I get an error, "only supports eulerXYZ"... and with collada the animation seems to be missing. Opening collada in LW gives all joints at 0,0,0 no animation, in motionbuilder gives a static pose of whichever frame ur at when u export.

Did I miss something... are there fixes?

cheers.

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Hi Rebel,

For the FBX you may need to reassign the hip joint.

It must be root level always.

Where is the Target Character from?

Thanks and Cheers

Nope... its not the hip joint. its from Lightwave, and the same skeleton/character works just fine in motionbuilder/maya/unity/webanimate/animeeple... basically everything.

Found that if I take the collada export, and run it through fbx converter, I CAN just about make a usable fbx out of it... It is however a heavy file, as for some reason it winds up with keys on all translation and scale channels for all bones, not just rotation... which is a pain cos it slows things down.

The target character also behaves as it should in ipi too... just the damn fbx export wont work.

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Hi Rebell,

Please send it to me for inspection.

Thanks and CHeers

Ok... well its had the thorough going over, and here's the result.

iPi will load and retarget just fine to a standard fbx rig coming form LW... but it will not export it, so there's no fbx route. Bvh is pretty useless as LW loads it as a different hierarchy, with different LRAs, and gimbal inbetweens, so there's no straight merging the motion back to your LW rig. Collada is interesting, exporting to that produces a file that doesnt load correctly in LW, motionbuilder, or others... but pumpin it through the fbx converter gives u an fbx that does load correctly, with the right hierarchy, lra's and motion... however, the scale is completely wrong (I dont mean X2, X10.. I mean the proportions are off, each joints Zpos is wrong) so again, there's no way to merge the motions back correctly.

So long story short... there is at the moment, no way to directly/easily send a character from LW to iPi to retarget, and send back again. You have to use some kind of intermediate app, mb, whatever.

If u guys could make a fix, preferably to the fbx export, itd be most appreciated.

cheers.

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Hi Rebel,

As Ive explained, iPi already fixed this bug.

It is the fault of your fbx export.

I know this for a fact that your hip is not root. And therefor will not work.

mr bones, Ive told u this already... twice.

Its NOT my fbx setup thats at fault. In LW its IMPOSSIBLE to have bones that dont exist under a root item... But thats not a problem ANYWHERE else... Every other software, that Ive tried (maya, motionbuilder, softimage, c4d and unity) all have no problem with this whatsoever, and it conforms perfectly within the bounds of the fbx standard having a master node.

Therefore iPi isnt implementing the fbx IO in accordance with whats standard elsewhere, although... iPi will open, and target to this character just fine... it WILL export it as BVH (no use for LW, hierarchies altered), it exports it as collada (correct hierarchy, but the file is screwy and theres errors in the motion), and plain FBX just wont export.

Anywhich way u look at it... there is NO POSSIBILITY of a direct exchange between lightwave and ipi... no can do.

Anyhow, there u have it...

iPi guys, andrew, whomever... could u look at this please... a fix would be great, I can send u an appropriate character. I did email y'all but no reply.

Cheers.

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This problem is directly related to how your character is created.

FBX allows seven different combinations of euler angles. The eEULER_XYZ is most commonly used.

Current version of iPiStudio only supports eEULER_XYZ.

We are working to support other angle combinations in future versions of iPiStudio, but it will take some time since heavy 3D math is involved.

Possible workaround is to change your character to only use eEULER_XYZ rotation order.

Ah, ok... so its a rotation order issue.

Sadly LWs rotation order is YXZ, and cant be changed... at least, I dont think so. There are modifiers that let you alter it for interpreting rotations brought in in a different order, but Im pretty sure that wont work for exporting... I'll do some experiments in any case.

But I fear this locks LW out without some intermediary step/software...

However... there's still collada. That DOES export out of ipi, just not correctly... might it be possible to get a fix in there somewhere to make it more compatible in the absence of FBX.. it would at least plug the gap well enough.

Cheers for the reply.

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Can you please email me a sample character that we can use for debugging the problem with COLLADA, so that we can release a hot fix.