building/porting animation library to blender

[mcbeth]

I have finished my biped and am about to start the tedious process of porting my cstudio lib to blender and I have a few question which the docs won’t clear on

1. Is it possible to access the negative timeline I find it useful in max for temporarily storing incidental and default poses. difining negative frame numbers in the timeline properties has no effect.

2. where do you name and can you rename action/s/strips when they are made.

3. Is creating an action strip the same as saving animation data e.g. bips in cstudio so that I can:
   a)use that blend as library that I can access from other blends with a new biped
   b)after creating action strips from animation/poses can I safely clear those keys from the timeline and start fresh from 0.

4. can poses be imported from external formats and be rebuilt as animationin blender, I think that this may well not be possible and I won’t be able to test it yet either, but I would still appreciate some input.
   or should I just render every Nth frame from max to an image format and use those as references in blender.

5. In max I dummies as floating bones for weapon handling can empties be used likewise can it be set and treated as a bone.

I have 600+ frames of sword and matial arts stuff for game, that I want to share between max and blender. any tips on this would be helpful and appreciated.

thanks in advance

[Fligh]

You seem to have more experience than I do and I have only used Blender so I’ll only answer what I know.

2. In the Action Editor, in the Datablock menu in the header. This will change it for the NLA editor too.

3. Actions automatically are linked to a Fake User, and get an F added in front of the name, so that they are not lost when saving. So, yes, they will always be available from the Append Libraries.
   Not sure about B.

4. .bvh works well with the available importers. Some .X and .md3, 5 whatever formats support some form of animation but that’s all I can say about them.

5. Yes, the .bvh import scripts actually write empties for all joints and then parent bone base and tip (head and tail?) to these so that the Empties drag the bones around.

%<

[mcbeth]

@Fligh %

You seem to have more experience than I do and I have.

not really I’ve been practicing three years now and only really started getting good at it six or seven months now

@Fligh %

3. Actions automatically are linked to a Fake User, and get an F added in front of the name, so that they are not lost when saving. So, yes, they will always be available from the Append Libraries.
   Not sure about B.

noted on A but can anybody answer B

@Fligh %

4. .bvh works well with the available importers. Some .X and .md3, 5 whatever formats support some form of animation but that’s all I can say about them.

I,ll be using an md5 script when it becomes compatible with 2.40

@Fligh %

5. Yes, the .bvh import scripts actually write empties for all joints and then parent bone base and tip (head and tail?) to these so that the Empties drag the bones around.
   %<

I’ll do some tests and see what happens

thanks