Let me know if this should be moved.

As many of you hopefully know I use Maya to model rather than XSI, simply because I've used it for years, and the more practice with it the better for future career purposes. Anyways, I've heard many XSI terms and I was hoping that some of you might be able to translate them into Maya lingo. So here they go:

1. Is a bone in XSI the same thing as a joint in Maya?
2. Is a null in XSI the same as a locator in Maya?
3. Is enveloping in XSI the same thing as binding with a skin in Maya?
4. Are animations in XSI that are then exported into BF2 the same principle as with using the trax editor in Maya by creating clips?
5. When exporting an animation to BF2 can you have inverse kinetics and character rigs?

That's all for now. If you have the answer to any one of these questions please post. Normally I would try to figure a lot of these out by simply testing, but I don't have that kinda time to export, it takes time to create half of these things anyways, and I don't want to put any strain on people with working exporters.

Thanks in advance!

woner11 wrote:1. Is a bone in XSI the same thing as a joint in Maya?

Yes

woner11 wrote:2. Is a null in XSI the same as a locator in Maya?

Yes

woner11 wrote:3. Is enveloping in XSI the same thing as binding with a skin in Maya?

I think so, but please explain what happens when you "bind a skin" in Maya and then i'll know for sure.

woner11 wrote:4. Are animations in XSI that are then exported into BF2 the same principle as with using the trax editor in Maya by creating clips?

Trax Editor in Maya = Animation Mixer in XSI

woner11 wrote:5. When exporting an animation to BF2 can you have inverse kinetics and character rig

Inverse Kinematics or IK will work in SWBF2 according to the animation_guide.doc but it also contradicts itself saying:
Do not animate the mesh, skeleton 2D/3D chain bone roots or effectors.
I have yet to animate anything for BF2 in IK though.
http://softimage.wiki.avid.com/xsidocs/ ... matics.htm

This might help with your transition from Maya to XSI even though it's 5 years old:
http://www.edharriss.com/tutorials/Maya ... kstart.htm

That was amazingly helpful. Thanks you soo much. As for the skin thing, it's when you select the msh/object and the root and then kinda "fuse" them together so that they work together (if you move the Rfoot join the right foot will move too).

As for the inverse kinetics, at least in the legs which is where I only use them, how would you otherwise go about bending the knees and such?

Lastly, again thanks for all your help and the guide. You answered my most pressing questions, so thanks a bunch!

Don't try Inverse Kinematics at all for SWBF. You'll just get frustrated by it, considering Forward Kinematics animations are not even documented that much, trying to get IK ingame will be irritating to no end. SWBF has very strict requirements for skeletons and animations, for one thing the ground null (dummyroot) cannot be keyframed more than twice, which makes some animations difficult to pull off, although it says to use splines for overextended animations. Also, never exceed 20 frames for any unit anims. I went up to 30 frames for a saber animation once, and it was slow ingame and stalled halfway through. My tip is have auto keyframing on when you start making your FK animation, it makes creating walk cycles and other anims easier as you wont forget to hit the key frame button. Just rotate the legs bones for bending the knees, I made a pretty nice walk cycle for my Arachnid that way.

Its a shame that they didnt provide much documentation for anims in the modtools. I myself believe that to be the major factor holding modders back from new material to use ingame, such as custom units that use custom skeletons.

all my 60 frame-idles work great
if you mgive a certain anim (shot/saberattack) too many frames, battlefront will cut it off, but i think you can controll the frames played/animleight via the combo

I did already know about auto key framing, I use it all the time. As for frames, that doesn't really bother me a whole lot because I can adjust the time it takes for the total animation to play relatively easily. Having to use FK though is a big shame and means I have to change a lot of the animations I've done, because they all rely on IK and character rigs to speed things up. I have one animation though, which is very reliant on a null I placed in the neck to control all the bones in that area, does that need to be deleted and redone?

you dont have to, you can make a new basepose with thatnull included
what do you mean with "all bones in that area"?

So what I did, was I parented a load of bones under null, so that when the null moved, it controlled all the bones underneath it.

VF501 wrote:SWBF has very strict requirements for skeletons and animations, for one thing the ground null (dummyroot) cannot be keyframed more than twice, which makes some animations difficult to pull off, although it says to use splines for overextended animations.

You shouldn't need to key the traverse bone more than twice anyway, if you want your unit to do flips or cartwheels then you should be animating the bone_root. The splines they speak of is just spline interpolation resulting in an ease in/ease out effect on those keys.