QUESTION Suspension Animation Woes

[Ryno917]

I'm at my witt's end with this thing. Does anyone have any info on why the suspension animations just simply don't work?

It all looks perfect in Blender, but the only thing in the suspension that animates is the last one or two items that were given keyframes (sometimes the thing that actually moves changes when I reexport the animation, sometimes it doesn't). Front tires "steer" endlessly, with their steering speed determined by steering lock.

I've exported with Blender's native FBX exported (from 2.83), tried Stereo's .ksanim exported, and tried 'better fbx exporter' and it doesn't work with any of them. The first two act the same, the last one completely borks the positions of everything on export.

Everything is fine in Blender. Animations look fine, and as far as I can tell they're setup correctly. What should I be looking for here? What's broken that can cause this?

 

[fughettaboutit]

select only the node that has the animation when exporting from blender (standard fbx export)
try different scales when exporting, first maybe 0.01

 

[Ryno917]

select only the node that has the animation when exporting from blender (standard fbx export)
try different scales when exporting, first maybe 0.01

There's several empties that are animated together to make the movement; are you suggesting to only pick one (the 'top level' if there is one) or just to make 100% sure there's no geometry in the export?

Thanks for the help!

 

[fughettaboutit]

oh multiple nodes with anim, yes i mean dont select geom, might not help at all;

maybe also try different transforms on export, usually Forward: -z, Up: y

 

[Ryno917]

oh multiple nodes with anim, yes i mean dont select geom, might not help at all;

maybe also try different transforms on export, usually Forward: -z, Up: y

Unfortunately that's already how it's setup for export. Here are my export settings, from Blender 2.93:

And for reference, all empties associated with the LF suspension animation shown in the window with the timeline showing keyframes (for exporting the LF animation FBX). As per the pipeline doc, frame 1 is lower position, 20 is highest, 10 is the default position:

Still can't get any of it to work. Only one element of each suspension (LF, LR, etc) animates. I've exported from Blender 2.82, 2.92, 2.93 and 3.2 all with the same results. Main FBX for the car mesh has all empties in it. Animation looks perfectly fine in Blender.

 

[Piereligio]

Unfortunately that's already how it's setup for export. Here are my export settings, from Blender 2.93:
View attachment 7668

And for reference, all empties associated with the LF suspension animation shown in the window with the timeline showing keyframes (for exporting the LF animation FBX). As per the pipeline doc, frame 1 is lower position, 20 is highest, 10 is the default position:
View attachment 7669

Still can't get any of it to work. Only one element of each suspension (LF, LR, etc) animates. I've exported from Blender 2.82, 2.92, 2.93 and 3.2 all with the same results. Main FBX for the car mesh has all empties in it. Animation looks perfectly fine in Blender.

Did you find solutions? I'm starting to animate in blender but I'm afraid I'm wasting time

 

[Ryno917]

Did you find solutions? I'm starting to animate in blender but I'm afraid I'm wasting time

Unfortunately, no.

 

[Fuzo]

Did you even tried it in the game? How does it look like in game? Because ksEditor has no idea whats the steering range of your car.

Btw for turning front wheels definitively don't use custom animation, animation should be used only for up and down movement of the wheels, steering is animated automatically by the engine. By placing HUB_XY node you can control the angle (Kingpin inclination) of the wheel. Steering rods are animated by connecting them to the HUB and applying constraint type of animation to it (mesh > DIR_mesh on X axis). Everything is described in modding pipeline. There are even some example files in SDK directory...

 

[Ryno917]

Did you even tried it in the game? How does it look like in game? Because ksEditor has no idea whats the steering range of your car.

Btw for turning front wheels definitively don't use custom animation, animation should be used only for up and down movement of the wheels, steering is animated automatically by the engine. By placing HUB_XY node you can control the angle (Kingpin inclination) of the wheel. Steering rods are animated by connecting them to the HUB and applying constraint type of animation to it (mesh > DIR_mesh on X axis). Everything is described in modding pipeline. There are even some example files in SDK directory...

As I said throughout this thread, everything appears to be setup correctly according to the pipeline document and other files I've studied. Obviously I have tried it in game as well.

The consensus that I've been getting is that there is an issue with the way Blender's FBX exporter handles the animations that can break them.

At some point I'll revisit this project and try to get the animations working, but I have a lot on my plate at the moment.

 

[Fuzo]

You still can try to use constraint animations if you have these issues with blender export. It takes a little more effort but the result can be even better than classic animation.

 

[Ryno917]

I'll probably go that route when I revisit this project

 

[Piereligio]

Unfortunately, no.

I forgot about my question here but I noticed the alert of your quote. I managed to solve ALL my issues with animations. The solution with ksanim exporter is to put the animated nodes inside another node, which points Y up, and -Z forward. This is a requirement, for ksanim exporter. The other solution is to just use FBX as you did (I'm on blender 3.5), but with these settings (otherwise it will export every animation in the same file, and not only the ones you want to export):