Hi,
I’ve made a very simple character animation (walk cycle), stored it into an action and saved it in its own blend file. I’ve also created a group out of the mesh to link/append in my other files.
Then I go to my main scene (another blender file) and try to link the group so as to make my animation accessible in there. A few weird things happen.
#1. While I can instance the character via the group and I can see it in the viewport, the character is not visible when playing the game. I’ve tried different shading modes and almost everything I could think of to no avail. Character won’t appear at all. The funny thing is that rendering the scene from the active camera will also not show the character!!! It’s as if it’s not there really. I understand that it’s an empty but is this how it’s supposed to work?
#2. After lots of testing, the only way I could get the character to show up is to make a proxy of it. The proxy, however, appears to be a different object from the empty. Again, is this how it’s supposed to work?
#3. Even though I can get the proxy_char to move (i.e. play back the animation recorded in the walk cycle action from the timeline/dopesheet), I’m unable to play the animation back through an action via the logic editor. I tried to use the object mesh to play the action and it didn’t work. Then I tried the armature and even the rig itself; both failed to play the action back.
I’ve got a nasty feeling that I’m missing something woefully obvious. What am I doing wrong?
What’s the workflow for such a task? How’s one supposed to make a group, what should there be in that group, how’s one supposed to link the group into another blend file and, most importantly, how the heck are the actions playable in the BGE? Can’t the mesh itself be used to trigger the action?
Any tips and or pointers to relevant sources wil be greatly appreciated.