[Bf-committers] Exporting Object Tracking Animations to COLLADA

[Gaia]

Hi, Phabtar;

I have not much experience, i just read the docs a bit to
understand more about the basics of collada. But it appears
to me that it should be possible to add a Blender profile and
export the baked animation data in a <technique_common>
element.

If i understood it correctly, then the animation data would
look something like this in Collada:

<animation>
<extra>
<technique_common>
<!-- data to provide for all other target systems -->
</technique_common>
<technique profile="BLENDER">
<!-- data for lossless import to blender -->
</technique>
</extra>
</animation>

The <technique_common> would then contain your option 2,
while <technique profile="BLENDER"> would contain your
option 1.

IMHO this approach could be used wherever Blender uses information that
is not supported by the Collada standards. And it allows other target
importers to even use the blender information if they happen to support
the BLENDER profile someday :)

This implies that Blender would need to support import of animations from
other sources which only provide the <technique_common>
in their dae files.

cheers,
Gaia

On 27.05.2012 12:33, Sukhitha Jayathilake wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Currently when exporting Object tracking animations, like eyeballs
> that follow some object,
> only the moving track-to object animation is exported. So importing
> the .dae back wont show the
> eyeball moving, for example. In order to make this right, Either
>
> 1. We can add a separate blender profile, which adds trackTo
> attribute, which points to
>      The track-to object. This wouldn't be of much use for other
> software, because it's blender specific.
> 2. Sort of Bake the Animation to the tracking object, and export.
> Which would introduce another animation curve, but
>      wouldn't actually impose the constraint between the objects when
> imported back.
>
> Or there maybe a better solution that I'm missing. What do you think
> would be best?
>
> Cheers,
> Phabtar
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