finally got around to testing it out! this is a hacked together thingy using an old genesis 3d act file that came with realityfactory. decompiled in milkshape 1.7.9 then exported to fbx. milkshape mucks up the frames with act files. (iirc you got to edit in notepad and i was too lazy). anyway that’s they don’t loop very well. but it looks like the uvs and animations come in ok and you’d probably be ok working from scratch. anyway you probably don’t even care anymore!
idle animation as default. arrows/wasd to make him run in place. space to jump.
Yeah… I learned how to use Blender the last time…(I come from 3D Studio Max) now I’ll start the same with Milkshape - but probabely only to animate and bone my Blender models… maybe also to generate UVs… not sure yet.
So Blender/Milkshape are good partners for a very low price… for those who like the modeling in Blender more.
Just tested Milkshape 1.7.10 (latest) while running Parallels and it seems to run just fine. I’ve never used Milkshape before, so I could do was to load a model and move it around, but everything seemed to work fine from what I could tell.
So what is your work path from Blender => Milkshape => Unity? Are you exporting as .OBJ from Blender?
Another option (although it will cost you $24 more than Milkshape) is Ultimate Unwrap 3D. UU3D supports so many file formats (and has some of it’s own (basic) animation features that it might work also. I’ll need to find another file format that Blender can export that includes animation. I tried DirectX .X, which normally works but UU3D won’t support that under Parallels. Maybe LWO or something else might work. I’ll dig into this a bit when I get a chance…
lithunwrap is still free i think. younger brother of ultimate. in my pc side exp, it was milshape and lith. ms for modeling and animation. lith for uvs. ultimate gives you some nice unwrap stuff iirc but no animation. any combo of the above will work though.
workflow wise… model in whatever you want → obj (?) bone and animate in milkshape, uv in lith/ultimate. export from ms as a fbx. milkshape is a pretty good low poly modeler though.
[edit: joe… didn’t see you reposted. all on parallels? awesome! that totally opens some doors…]
Forgot about LithUnwrap, thanks for that. There are so many improvements in UU3D that it’s definitely worth the $49 IMHO. You’re aware that UU3D supports .FBX also, right? Plus a mess of other file formats. I’ve posted a question on the BlenderArtists forum, I hope to find a better way to get Blender animations into Unity and not have to learn yet another 3D app. So if I can get Blender => UU3D => Unity to work, I’ll be happy.
Speaking of “yet another 3D app”, anyone tried “Pixels3D”? I just got a coupon for $100 off (final price is $49 after discount) so I decided to check it out. The website doesn’t say anything about export file formats so I don’t know if it’ll work, but some of the features look pretty nice.
I also stopped by “Equinox 3D”'s website. It’s a free Linux / OS X based 3D app that exports Collada files. The developer was just starting to add some animation features when I last checked 6 months ago, but it doesn’t look like anything new has happened since…
You’re aware that UU3D supports .FBX also, right?
nope. i wasn’t.
sorry i sure wasn’t paying attention! i don’t think lwo will work for you. that’s lightwave’s object format. animation would be in a lws file. the ogre exporter sounds like it has a good shot. and poof you have a blender solution… that’d be cool!
No such luck I just checked the UU3D .FBX exporter and it doesn’t include animations. I emailed Brad (the developer) to ask if this might be added in the near future. The other “bummer” is that the Blender Ogre script requires Python 2.4 and all Mac builds of Blender use Python 2.3… argh…
BTW, were you aware that there was a MilkShape export script for Blender? I ran into it while searching the Blender forums. It’s pretty old, and not very complete, but might be useful for something.
So I guess the only real solutions at present are blender => MilkShape => Unity or blender => Dim3 => Unity.
UPDATE: I got Blender, Python 2.4 and the Ogre 3D script to all run under Parallels Desktop. It’s getting kind of “ugly” though…
bah! the ogre export doesn’t help ya because ultimate doesn’t do fbx’s with animation. so you’re still through milkshape/dim. at least maybe you could animate in blender. not positive but seem to think milkshape has an ogre importer? if not what about MD3/5… whatever they are: halflife/doom. pretty sure milkshape has em. thought blender did too. then at least it’s not learning a whole new app. just import and export. you could still use ultimate for uving. but yeah, getting kind of ugly. you’d certainly be happier with blender native support…
You’re right about UU3D and .FBX, but after chatting with the guy who’s working on “Collada Blender” I’ve got a feeling we’ll see animation support in UU3D long before we’ll ever see a full version of the Collada script.
I haven’t really used Milkshape or Dim3 yet. Sure seems to be a shame to have to use a product that doesn’t have 1/10th of Blender’s abilities just to get an animation into Unity
I exchanged emails with the developer at “Collada Blender” about a week ago. Basically he’s been too busy with other things and the script has made little (if any) progress in months. Pretty disappointing too, not many open source projects get funding and when this project got added to the “summer of code” funding earlier this year I had great hopes of seeing animation by now. Not very encouraging I’m afraid.
Hey, I may have good news! I just got an email from Brad (UU3D) that his .FBX plugin -does- support animation. Anybody got a Blender file with animation they’d like me to try?
Anybody got a Blender file with animation they’d like me to try?
sorry i don’t! i bit the bullet and bought lightwave. just tried milkshape for elias. if i get some time i might play with it but work is starting to pile up :x
Update: The author of the Ogre XML exporter was kind enough to modify his script so it now works with Python 2.3, and consequently the current versions of Blender for Mac (PPC and Intel). The new script can be downloaded here: http://www.imaph.tu-bs.de/home/mire/OGRE/BlenderExport.tar.gz
How is this installed in Blender? I had a quick google search but couldn’t find the paths they were talking about. Do I have to create folders within Blender.app?
As ogre and collada are both xml file formats, gotta wonder how difficult it would be to transform from one to the other…
I just checked the UU3D .FBX exporter and it doesn’t include animations. I emailed Brad (the developer) to ask if this might be added in the near future. The other “bummer” is that the Blender Ogre script requires Python 2.4 and all Mac builds of Blender use Python 2.3… argh…