[info]Unit Skeleton in Milkshape3d Ascii

[tirpider]

I accidentaly spent 3 days figuring out how to get the skeleton from all_inf_pilot.msh into Milkshape 3D ascii format.

It turns out Milkshape likes its rotation info in radians.

Anyway, I won't begin to speculate on how this will be usefull, but I am certain it will be

The file is a simple txt file and contains all the nulls from the model, named, parented, positioned and rotated exactly as they are in the MSH.

There is a giant cube in the scene. It can be deleted. (or not imorted at all.)

The file can be imported into Milkshape 3d and Character FX.
(It was a joy to play with the ik tool in Character FX without spending a month in pro grade docs learning XSI)

This is as far as I am with this study. I don't know much of the details but can answer some questions if you have any.

Tool Links:
MilkShape 3D 1.8.5 Beta2 is a 30 day trial modeler. (very low cost)
chUmbaLum sOft Forum can help you figure out some of the quirks of MS3D.

CharacterFX is a freeware animator that can import Milkshape's ASCII format. I'm a total newbie to modeling and animation, so it is ackward to use, but 1000 times more intuitive than XSI.

Enjoy

-edit
[spoiler]As a follow up, I now have the all_inf_trooperfleet mesh in milkshape, with the bones.
Everything is there except for the weights. (I converted the msh to an obj then imported into milkshape)

So, I'm looking for a couple of things.. how to convey the weights and keyframe information to Milkshape.

Then I can look for a path back into Battlefront.
I won't be making a msh exporter, that is certain.
But I might be able to kludge together some kind of Milkshape ASCII to SWBF MSH, thing.

The big thing isn't getting the msh's back and forth, or even doing the weights properly.
It's preserving and creating the ANM2 frame data.
That means making new animations outside of XSI.[/spoiler]

edit by tirpider: tagged title