Does LY support Animations that actively scale bones?

#1

In Blender, I am animating by scaling bones and keyframing them, however, the scaling does not seem to carry over to LY:

8443-2019-04-30-05-06-13.gif2019-04-30-05-06-13.gif

Does LY support animations that actively scale bones? If not, is there an alternative to achieving a similar effect?

#2

i think you can use morph target animation, the engine has that function.

#3

Hey @Rook,

You can do scaled joint animations if you switch your Actor component Skinning Method property to use Linear Skinning (by default it is set to Dual Quaternion). Hope that helps!

#4

Hey @Ajia,

I’m still getting very mixed results with this method. Some times it works fine, sometimes it doesn’t work. After following your instructions, I managed to avoid inversion, however, if I scale the Root on one axis, additional bones and their respective meshes seem to get offset in LY.

Here is a zipped .blend, if that helps: 8445-monkeybox.zip (307 KB)monkeybox.zip

#5

8427-2019-05-02-21-53-14.gif2019-05-02-21-53-14.gifHey @Ajia,

Thanks, that’s awesome! However, it seems to only work fine for scaling the root bone. If I scale another bone, I get inverted results and scaling applied to different axes:

8427-2019-05-02-21-53-14.gif

What should I do to fix this?

#6

Awesome! I hadn’t realized that morph targets were a thing. Now I’m running into a couple issues with morph targets: 8436-2019-05-03-04-37-02.gif2019-05-03-04-37-02.gif

This is all one rig, however only one side shrinks accordingly. Any ideas as to why this is happening?

RESOLVED: For some reason, I had to literally replace the mesh in order for the shape key scaling to take effect. Still not sure why this happened in the first place.

#7

Hey @Rook,

From what I’m seeing, it looks like you may need to double check your settings when exporting the FBX from Blender, or adjust the FBX Settings within Lumberyard for the facing direction of the asset. I would start with the export settings from Blender first though.

Have you looked at this post yet regarding Blender exports?

https://forums.awsgametech.com/t/blender-fbx-export-best-practices-for-characters-animations/5646/1

We also have this documentation page that talks a bit more about the Coordinate System Change in the FBX Settings within Lumberyard:

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/latest/userguide/char-fbx-importer-create-skinned-meshes-best-practices.html

#8

Hey @Rook

Just initially looking at the files you provided, there may be some extra gotchas with our skeleton and skinning requirements that may not have been as clear. When I enabled the skeleton to draw for the Actor in the level, I could see that the skeleton appeared to be offset from the pivot location. You will likely need to re-rig and reskin based on the adjustments we require.

  • The Root Bone/Joint should be at 0,0,0 Translation and 0,0,0 for Rotation. Now in the case of Blender, there tends to be that Armature node living above the root bone, so these settings would also need to apply to that.
  • I am not positive if the scale settings on the Armature are also being inherited down to the root bone when it is being brought into Lumberyard, but it may also be clear to keep the Armature set to 1,1,1 for Scale and then adjust your bones however you need to afterwards.
  • If possible in Blender, try setting up your skeleton rig without the Armature. Lumberyard doesn’t care for nodes being above the root bone.
    Give those things a try and let us know if that helps.
#9

i dumped unity for this engine. glad to see you are able to use that function successfully with Blender3d, i think morph targets are great but are specific to the model & can not be applied to others that have different vertex structures, also cpu/gpu intensive. Blender3d is Z up much like Lumberyard but Y backward, what i do is in Edit Mode of the bones i set the bone roll so it is Y forward like Lumberyard before export, i think that is why you have problems scaling the bones.