Ogre3D

Some times when using a model in your game only a certain amount of animations are used this has the affect of bloating your resources with unnecessary data.

As of version Equity10 0.3.7.1 Can now delete unwanted motions then the model can be exported out with just the motions you want.

Also some motion don't have the required names required for your game Equity can help out and has the ability to rename motions it also can save motions that can be reloaded later and motions can be cloned/copied.

OK first off we will use the Sinbad.mesh model and its motions as every one has this model in the SDK. if for some reason you dont have the model just down load the model and models used to test Equity.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/hgts123/files/Test_Models.zip/download

Start Equity and navigate to File->Import->Ogre3D->Mesh

Now navigate with the Open dialog that appears to where your Model is. ( .mesh file )

When the model loads you will be asked do you want to load a Resource File.

You can click Yes and navigate to the resources.cfg you are using in your game but for the purposes of this tutorial it does not matter only the motions are affected and non of the internal material references in the mesh file are altered so you can click No Delete motions and Export then place the model back into your game it will look exactly the same but with less or renamed motions.

Ok now Double click on the Motions Folder.

As you can see a list of motions appear in the case of Sinbad there are 13 Dance DrawSwords and so on when you click on a Motion you will notice at the bottom the Motion Control Panel its a bit limited at the moment but will improve in future releases but there is a Play Stop and Pose Button.

The Pose Button always returns the Model to the Default Pose this is the starting position of the model with or without a motion you could say the default skeleton in the case of Sinbad.

Ok now to the right the motions manager is Active and with a set of Options. 

The first and obvious thing you will see is the name of the Motion

Then Next is the Time this is the total time of the Motion in seconds.

Ok the Buttons.

I am not going to go into to much detail about this at the moment but click it and you will see it brings up the motion details including its Paths and Frames and the Times at which things happen in the Motion.

Clicking this button brings the Change Motion Name dialog. The name that appears in the dialog is the current selected Motion name now if you click Ok Equity will complain that a Motion by this name Exists so you will have to alter it so in this example stick a 2 after Dance so Dance2 now click Ok and the Motion name will change to Dance2. Also note that Motion names can be funny about space so if you type Dance 2 Equity will replace it with Dance_2.

The Copy Motion Button provides the ability to clone a Motion so in this Example when clicked it will ask you again for a name if you type a 2 after Dance Dance2 and click ok a New motion will be created now Dance2 will be an Exact copy of Dance. This may seem an odd thing at the moment “why do it” later in future releases we will be adding Motion Edit so you can edit the motion and creating a copy then altering that seems a safe thing to do.

This button will bring up a Save dialog the save name is the model name plus the motion name and mot so it stands out in a file system so in this case the file will be sinbad_dance_mot.omf the omf file extension stands for Ogre Motion File but of course you can name the file anything you want.

Load Motion

Load motion is the counter part to Save motion when clicked it will bring up the load dialog navigate to where you saved the omf file and it will load it there are two things to note.

Note 1 If the file being loaded as a motion name that already exists in the model Equity will ask you to rename it on loading.

Note 2 you can not just load any motion file say from ninja model to Sinbad model it gets a bit involved but in a nut shell the skeleton as different names for its joint/bones and a motion works on the motion by the names of the joints in the case of sinbad they are described like Jaw neck and so on but ninja is just joint1 joint2. If you try to load a Motion file that does not match the model skeleton Equity will tell you and abort the motion load.

And Finally Delete Motion ok this will delete the selected motion it is advised to save the motion before deleting it just in case you want it back at a later date for a new game.

You can keep deleting motions till there are none the motion folder will go grey to add a motion back just click the motion folder to bring back the Motion Manager.

We have many ideas in the pipeline including bulk delete motions which will save time deleting individual motion and a motion editor which will be able to create/edit motions.

Thanks

W.T.Flanigan - H.C.Flanigan