Hi !
I have imported armature object to blender. But when I set the armature as parrent of some object and assign proper vertex group to it - the object jumps away. Also when I go to Edit Mode the armature’s root jumps to its Object center (when I leave edit mode it jumps back).
You probably need to select all the bones in edit mode and clear bone roll angles. Ctrl- r is the hot key (I think)
I tried it - without success. Ctrl-R is Roll hotkey, so I used Transform properties. All angles were 0 except legs (-0.005 and 0.005).
To reset rotation: Alt R
To reset location: Alt G
Greets,
Bartje
ctrl n is reset bone roll.
Does this “armature you imported” have a keyed animation associated with it ? If it does you should turn on the Rest Position option in the Armature panel in (F9) Editing context of the Buttons Window before you parent the mesh/object to it … and then turn it off after you are done with the parenting …
And also make sure that both the armature and the mesh/object have the same up axis, i.e. that the Transform Properties window shows no rotation to either object or armature along any of the axes (i.e. they should be 0.000 for RotX/Y/Z) when they are aligned for parenting in Object Mode … if they do not have the same up axis just select them in Object Mode and Ctrl-A to apply the scale and rotation …
Though if the armature does have an animation that is keyed this could screw them up … If this is the case align your mesh/object to the armature by: 1) selecting the armature and Alt-R to clear it rotation (if any) in Object Mode 2) then select the mesh/object and rotate/align it to the armature with it’s rotation cleared 3) and when you are happy with the alignment then select the the mesh/object and and Ctrl-A to apply the rotation …
Now if this results in your armature being oriented “lying down” because the armature has the Y for it’s up axis just rotate it 90 degrees to have it align to Blender’s Z up 3D view … But do not apply this rotation as this might cause the animation associated with the armature to screw up …
And as for roll angles … I’m not sure if your problem has anything to do with them … But since it seems you don’t quite seem to understand what they are for (a zero roll for a bone in Edit mode isn’t necessarily a good thing) …
Unless all the bones in your armature are either perfectly perpendicular or horizontal to the global/local axes they should have a roll value if the up axis for your armature is the Z axis … But if your armature uses the Y as its up axis you can have an angled bone not perfectly perpendicular or horizontal to the global/local axes can still have a roll value of zero as long as it is parallel to the Z axis … (sorry I know this can get very confusing) … This is because the armature system uses the Y for its up axis which doesn’t conform to Blender version of the crazy aunt in the attic : it’s Z up view ports … And so when you create an armature and align it with the view ports this kind of does a number on the orientation of the bones (a little more so then if the Y was the up axis), but since in actual practice it is usually not possible to build a rig that is completely parallel to the three axes you will need to recalculate bone roll angles …
An easy (and at the level of coding very similar) analogy would be recalculating normals in a mesh . Just like normals orient the surface of a mesh to inside/outside, recalculating roll angles orients the bone properly in Pose Mode … the face that in Edit Mode the transform properties shows a roll value does not mean very much and a value of zero for a bone that is not oriented as described above can give you problems in Pose Mode …
Hope this helps, but if it doesn’t post a blend …
I tryed to play with it, but without result. My goal is to convert characters from POSER (over 3DS+BVH) to blender (and then jMonkeyEngine format - I want them for our game). The files are here: http://owportal.info/~lefty/blender/
Yes your armature does have keyed poses … although the “animation” does nothing except stand in the slightly off T pose and jumps to up to its “pose” location…
And your mesh(es) for some reason also has a pose to it … the head is twisted, one arm is slightly moved back, etc … and so is not posed in a symmetrical manner suitable for skinning to the armature … not to mention the fact that the character is composed of dozens of separate objects …
I have absolutely no experience importing/exporting from Blender to Poser but I can tell you from what I see in your file that your problem isn’t the armature jumping around … it’s the fact that the Poser model you imported consists of dozens discreet separate meshes/objects instead of just one, and also the fact that the 3ds file of the mesh was exported with the pose of the armature applied to it which makes it not symmetrical and so not suitable to parent to the armature when it is set to its Rest Position (which has no pose to it) …
Because you have discreet objects for the parts of the model you do not have any vertex groups to speak of … Just the ones created from the armature bones when you tried to parent the mesh to the armature, though those named groups do not have any vertices assigned to them … so they are empty …
You can assign separate mesh/objects to an armature bone by going into Pose Mode selecting the mesh/object 1st then shift-selecting the armature bone and then parenting it by Ctrl-P and selecting bone from the prompt … but with how the current mesh/objects are arranged this will give you flying mannequin parts …
This might also have to do with how Poser’s armature system calculates its motion as compared to Blender … Blender uses quaternions to calculate its rotations where as Poser might use Euler angles …
The ideal solution for you would be if somehow you could export a poser model that was 1) posed properly and 2) only consisted of a single mesh which you could create vertex groups and weight properly … Currently you would have to join all the parts and then weld all the loose bits together … and then assign the proper parts to vetex groups and then weight paint etc …
And as for the bvh you do have an option in the bvh import script to import the animation data as empties which you could use as parents to individual armature bones or as the targets for said bones … but you would have to either just clear the pose data from your current armature or make a new one …
I’m sorry if you were hoping for an easy way to convert Poser files into your game file format but you are looking at quite a bit of work …
im a newb and not shure if this will help but you should make shure the armature is the base parent to everything. if you have anything else thats a child on it before you add the parent the bones , it will deform stuff according to your other parented centers. also make any constraints on bones before you make it parent to anything. So you should check your constrains, modifiers, and parents to everything. im probably be saying some obvious stuff but i just went through some problems with armatures too that sound like they did similar things.