Exporting Custom Animations - Pherakki/Blender-Tools-for-DSCS GitHub Wiki

Animations are exported from the non-linear animation tracks assigned to the armature of the exported model. To add a non-linear animation track, first go to the Dope Sheet:

and from the Dope Sheet sub-menu, go to the Action Editor:

From this screen you can either create a new animation (which is beyond the scope of this tutorial), or select a new active action for the armature from the drop-down in the centre of the top toolbar of the Action Editor.

Now that the armature has an active action, you can push it to a new NLA track. To do this, go to the Nonlinear Animation widget:

This will present you with a list of all the animations that the Blender Tools will export for this model. Each "row" in the NLA animation table is termed a "Track", and each track will be written to a separate game file. Each "Track" can contain multiple Actions (which we just looked at), which are termed "Strips" here. To add a new track (equivalently, prepare a new animation for export), there is an appropriate option in the "Add" menu in the NLA widget:

You can then press the "Push Down Action" button on the Dope Sheet track to push the active action on the armature onto the new, blank NLA track.

To change the name of the exported file, rename the NLATrack by double-clicking its name:

Finally, you can adjust how quickly the animation is played by scaling the action. To do so:

  1. Drag the timeline cursor to frame 1
  2. Press 'S' whilst the mouse cursor is within the NLA Widget to activate scaling mode
  3. Scale the track by entering a number on the keyboard then pressing enter, or by dragging the mouse
  4. If you didn't pay attention to step 1, you can re-align the start of the strip with frame 1 by pressing 'G' and dragging the mouse. Remember to do step 1 next time.

The animation will play in-game at 24 * (scale factor of the NLA strip) frames per second, which should be the same speed Blender will run the animation with default settings and no bottleneck in the render speed.

Every models requires an animation called base. This is the Base Animation for that model. This animation will play at all times, and other animations will be layered on top. This can consist of a single frame if you do not want such an animation. Every animation other than the Base is an "Overlay" animation, and they stack on top of the base. Most models have a blank Base animation so only an Overlay animation appears to play.

The list of required animations for a particular model will depend on the purpose of the model. Check a similar model to the one you are trying to export to see what animations it will need. For example, a digimon will require the following at a minimum:

  • base: The Base Animation for the model.
  • ba01: The Attack animation for physical attacks.
  • ba02: The Attack animation for regular Skills.
  • bs01: The Attack animation for Special Skill 1.
  • bs02: The Attack animation for Special Skill 2.
  • bd01: The damage-taken animation.
  • bd02: The animation played when the digimon hits 0 HP, or when receiving a critical hit.
  • bd03: The animation played when a digimon gets up from being revived, or after receiving a critical hit.
  • bg01: The animation played when Guarding against an attack.
  • bn01: The rest animation.
  • br01: The run/movement animation.
  • bv01: The animation played after winning a battle.