A quick question for those who know what they're doing.. err..

Can Houdini export animated textures with the Torque render node?

I'm making a magic staff for practice, and I have a little crystal on top of it, which I'm trying to animate the texture of.

The textures export just fine, I have no errors in the dump.html, the texture is animated in Houdini.

I'm animating the UVTexture Angle to give it a bit of a swirly effect, so nothing fancy.

Any ideas why it's not working? The exporter can't handle it? Or am I missing something simple here..

I hope you've setup the staff ‘magic’ animation sequence in the 'Sequence' Tab in the ROP to start. FrameCount, FPS, etc…need to be declared/written into the file with the ROP's entry fields.

The object in question, exported from Apprentice HD, and working ‘fine’ inside Houdini and the "SHOW TOOL PRO", might possibly need a Torque Script datablock with the ‘loaded sequence’ in a console ‘method’.

For example:

You have this ‘staff’, and it contains 'animation'. This is just the beginning of seeing it ‘working’ inside the engine at runTime.

The engine, does not know when to ‘play’ the sequence. The engine will not ‘automatically’ run a sequence, it needs to be ‘told’ when the sequence runs.

To continue the example:

You need to get the animation's internal ‘name’ of the sequence in the ROP, to be included in a function or method.

When objects are ‘placed’ inside the TGE, there is an automatic ‘callback’ :nAdd fired inside the engine. Inside this callback, you would script the staff animation to turn “ON”….to get the staff's animation ‘playing’ inside the engine/world. This ‘callback’ is fired for each object ‘placed’ in a Mission, so you 'know' that this line of code/script will be run and processed. This is the general ‘first place’ to get a sequence ‘running’. Of course, if there are special ‘instances’ of time where this sequence will play, you'll need to ‘script’ those commands as well. When the holder's ‘Damage State’ changes, if the holder ‘sees’ another type of opponent, it's endless…until you run out of bandwidth!

This is merely the beginning to getting your art ‘working’ inside Torque. You can have many sequences embeddd/loaded into a ‘shape’. It is the Torque Scripting that makes it ‘happen’ at runTime.

It sounds like you've got a properly setup shape inside Apprentice HD…and perhaps a proper DTS shape with animation. Getting animations viewed inside the engine like this is a FAQ for the Torque Artist.

I hope this helps somewhat, sounds like you're on the right track.

Rex

PS: the quickest and dirtiest method to check is is to name your animation 'ambient'…no quotes.

This namingConvention of ‘ambient’ on a sequence is like a hardcoded ‘callback’ function…if the sequence is named correctly, it ‘should’ fire with :nAdd callback automagically.

I wouldn't rely upon that ‘catchall’ to check though…I would give each animation a sequenceSpecific ‘name’ and script it's running via a datablock…

Hi DrFrankenRex,

The animation does not show up in ShowTool Pro.

Which is why I was asking about animating the texture and exporting it using the Torque render node, if that works or not.

I named the animation ambient, which should make it play on load.
Start frame is 1, end frame is set to 48 (It's just a small cyclic animation)
Fps is 30, override is -1, and priority is set to 5.

It's also set on Cyclic, Enable Morph, Enable TVert, Enable Visibility, and enable transform.

No triggers.

The Export DTS is set, and it's set to export animations, and to copy textures to the destination folder.

I am perfectly aware of how to import my work into the TGE engine etc.

I'm just trying to figure out if the Houdini Torque exporter supports animated UV's, or if I'm going to have to come up with something else.

It's really difficult to ‘guess’ about files, is it possible to upload the Scene? DTS?

This ‘feature’ should be ‘working’, I believe there may even be an example in Help for it?

Here's the .hipnc file and the textures.

Like I said, nothing fancy about it, just a quick testmodel.

Ack… RAR, installed on my other workstation…no matter.


I looked into this, and can say that I exported the ‘Example’ UV animation setup from the Torque ROP ‘Help’ examples and it worked exactly as I expected after export. I suggest you view the EXAMPLE files shipped with the ROP and interpolate….sorry to suggest your experience with the Torque Engine was not ‘advanced’. Mea Culpa, mea culpa.

I got it viewable in ShowToolPro, and would ‘expect’ the same behavior once inside the engine. I had a sequence named ‘Ambient’ with scrolling UV's….cyclic, worked with Play button; no scripting yet.

I'll try to get this RAR cracked open and look at how you've constructed the Scene.

The ‘feature’ does export….animated UV's.

So, in the HELP section of the ROP…you'll find working EXAMPLES of the supported features….good place to start when things go bonkers.

Allright, so I screwed something up somewhere. Hmm…

I'm not that advanced with the engine, but I didn't get it yesterday

I'll crack open that example and see what they've done that I havent.

If I'm not out ‘giggin’ in the RealWorld, I'm most often sitting at my two workstations….and work remotely with Development Teams everywhere with MSNmessenger, IRC servers and more. My MSNmessenger contact info is BL_Rex-AT-hotmail-DOT-com.

I help out like this all day long, give me a ‘chat’ sometime for questions…..

Thanks for the help DrFrankenRex.

I almost got it now, leaving it for tonight and going at it again tomorrow