What is the correct process for creating model in Blender and playing it in three.js?
Talking about skeletal animation. What to export, and which functions to call in order to play the animation on three.js. Also how should a trivial JSON exported file look like in order to work in three.js.
How exactly should a pipeline look like for correct results?
When exporting your animated model, you need to have "Skinning", "Bones" and "Skeletal animation" options checked in the exporter. The resulting json file should contain, among other things, non-empty skinWeights, bones and animation properties, like in this file: http://mrdoob.github.com/three.js/examples/obj/buffalo/buffalo.js
For playing the animation with Three.js, start with this example: http://mrdoob.github.com/three.js/examples/webgl_animation_skinning.html (available in the three.js source package).
Related
We have an issue with exporting our 3D Assets and animations correctly so that three.js can correctly display them.
All our 3D artists work with Cinema4D so we need to go through blender to export a three.js compatible JSON. They export the scene as FBX and then import it to blender. This seems to work fine. The model looks good there (with Material View set in Preview Window) and the simpler models we exported even worked with textures and animations.
But we now have a scene where, when we load the resulting JSON, some of the meshes are flipped 180° (but only some - the trees) and one of the models (Santa model) is not textured. They all look fine in blender.
When loading the JSON in https://threejs.org/editor/ you will immediately see the issues:
Is this an export problem? Can we fix it by tweaking the export params? Will we need to adjust the model in blender?
I would advise a couple things here:
File a bug on three.js including the .blend file
Try freezing transforms in Blender or C4D before export
Perhaps try a different three.js-compatible blender exporter, like glTF-Blender-Exporter.
Is there any way to export the whole scene from Maya to Three.js.
Exported elements should be:
all mesh, textures, cameras, including the lights, shadows etc.
So that I can get the proper rendered effect that is been in the maya.
If you read the doc for the Maya exporter, it currently doesn't support exporting lights. You'll have to create the manually in your three.js code.
I don't know the current status of three.js loaders as I havn't used for a while now but back then Collada and FBX exporters were shaky. And still seem to be. You can try exporting from Maya to FBX and convert it (FBX file format supports lights).
OBJ file format doesn't support support lights of animation but this is the easiest way to go.
Long story short, export your models with the correct materials and create and place your lights manually.
PS: You can't export shadows.
Blender has the ability to set a material to Flat or Smooth.
In the Blender exporter for three.js, when I check "Export Normals" to JS model, I always export all materials as Smooth. The exported file is twice bigger.
Is there a way to export models with Flat Shaded and Smooth shaded faces without need to set it manually in three.js ?
There is no flatshading/noshading/smoothshading equivalent in blender. However as few other features (blending, depthwrite, depthtest) it could be proposed in the 'threejs' part of the material pannel.
You could do it yourself by editing the following files in the addon :
constants.py,
__init__.py,
exporter/material.py,
exporter/api/material.py
(copy the way blending types work for example)
You would just pay attention that the blender io-three addon yet has a shading field for materials, used to define phong or lambert materials. You would just have to chose an other name.
Finally you would also have to edit threejs so the JSONLoader can parse the new property you add.
That said, it is a bit longer than setting your materials properties in your code, since you will always need to write material=new THREE.Mesh****Material(properties)...
I'm new to both Blender and ThreeJs and searched a lot before asking. I created a model with Blender and esported it as .dae so I can load it in the html canvas. The problem is that only the model is loaded and not the textures. I'm doing something wrong or it's the loader that somehow causes the problem?
Here is the sample:
http://provasitimek.herobo.com/firstImport2.html
and the code:
https://github.com/MarcinKwiatkowski1988/learningThreeJs/tree/master/ThreeJs_and_blender
PS. the blender version is 2.70 (so maybe the problem lays here?)
PS2: So, after many attempts, these are my conclusions:
to get the color of the object, you have to choose the Blender renderer and not Cycles renderer
the export to the file .dae is not realy significant, should working with all options (or at least I didn't find any differences between files exported with different options)
if you use Blender renderer and any basic materials (Basic, Lambert, Phong) you get only the color on the object rendered in threeJs: so, for example, if you apply a trasparency to you object on blender, you will not see it on the rendered object on threeJs
with my current level (i just started to learn threeJs and blender 2 weeks ago) this is as far as I can help. Hope someone with higher skills like #mrdoob would figure out what the problem is
THREE.js does not pair models and textures until you actually make a mesh. Export The model and texture separately, load them separately and call
new THREE.Mesh(blenderGeometry,blenderTexure)
I've acquired a great quad model. I skinned and animated it to a rig build by a
Mel script. It works great as far as editing the animation using sliders and parameters
in Maya. When I export the file as an FBX file to Unity3D, it does not animate. Is something
being lost in the translation from Mel to the rig? Unity needs a boned rig, is this procedural rig not the equivalent of a rig built and animated with the skeleton tools in Maya? I've check that I have a 'Reference' folder, I've set keys, changed root name to "Hips".
Thanks for any insight on this question.
dDuane
If you are transferring the file with no errors and there is no animation then there are three issues to look at.
First, you may have accidentally not exported the keyframes. Make sure the box is checked to export animation on the FBX export UI.
Second, it's possible that the object that contains the actual keyframes is not being exported. When you animate using the MEL scripted GUI, find out where the actual keyframes are on the rig and make sure that object is exporting with the rest of the character.
Third, the object might be transferring fine but depending on the rig setup the connections/constraints/whatever might not be working or supported in Unity. You might consider baking the animation to the skeleton before transferring to the engine. To do this, select the skeleton, click [Edit -> Keys -> Bake Simulation].
I don't know what Maya you are using, but I've always used 2010. This is the workflow that we used for a small unity 3D game project:
Export all of the
animations in one scene as a .fbx. Be sure you just select the geometry (it
usually helps to have it all grouped, but if you can't for some reason that's
okay) and hit export selected.
These FBX export options should be checked:
Geometry:
Edge smoothing,
Tangents and Bi-normals
Animation:
Animation,
Bake Animations,
Bake Animations,
(range of animation),
step = 1
Deformed Models:
Deformed Models,
Skins,
Blend Shapes (if using these),
Curve Filters,
Resample as Euler Interpolation,
Input Connections,
Instances to Objects,
Referenced Containers Content (if using any references),
FBX File Format
Binary
FBX200900
When you bring this into Unity, set animation generation
to "store in root." If all of your
animation is in this one file (which it should be). The "split
animations" box should be checked and define the names and range of these in the
chart below. When you eventually create an animation blending script, drag
and drop it on the animation object within the player prefab, not the prefab
itself.