Hello,

I'm having issue exporting simple key-framed animations (for a door) from Blender 2.9x to MAX. I've been exporting to FBX. So far, I've just been experimenting to get my workflow down, so nothing serious, but this has become a bit frustrating. So, if anyone can help, that would be great.

The first door (really just a cube with animations for a test) I exported did what it was supposed to do. When I imported it into MAX, the animations showed up as they were supposed to.

The second door (animated the same way as the first and exported with the same settings) came in fine, but NO animations were found.

The third door (animated and exported the same way) came in to MAX fine and with animations, but when placed in a level and running the game, the door falls through the checkered ground and disappears (the others did not).

I've tried a few more, but they come in to MAX with no animations found.

So, is there a reliable way to export a model with keyframed animations from Blender 2.9x and import it into MAX without issues? The fault is most likely mine and I might have an export setting incorrect or something ... unless importing into MAX is still a gamble or some such.

Any help would be appreciated.

Hello,

I am not an expert with the latest versions of Blender.
However I successfully tested these export settings with Blender v.2.90.1 and the latest alpha version of Game Guru Max : (see included screen capture)



As you probably know the import of animated rigged items is still in development.
Even if the glTF format is correctly imported I noticed a few problems :
1) The Render Importer Dome doesn't systematically appear (when this option is selected in the "Advanced Settings".
2) The animations are not active in the Standalone project. (edited on Nov-19th : it can work if they are correctly connected to a behavior. That's the case for an animated mesh "Door" connected to the behavior "Door" with the settings mentioned by Argent_Arts in the next comment).
3) The behavior "Door" requires some explanation about its usage. How doest it control the animation of an imported animated door ?

You are welcome if you wish to know more about my experiments.

Thanks, mikeven. I appreciate you trying to help.

This is not working for me. When I use GLTF, the model comes in at the wrong scale. When I use FBX, the model comes in at the appropriate scale. But in either case, the model I am working with comes in with no animation found, whether I am using FBX or GLTF. These are basics keyframe animations (the door slides to one side with Open as its name and slides back with Close as its name).

About #3:

The door requires an animation named "open" and and animation named "close". It will trigger the "open" and "close" animation as needed. For the models that I did get imported with animation, I had three animations that I named, "still", "open", and "close". The "still" animation was no animation at all (keyframe 0 set to the closed position).

Argent_Arts, thank you very much for your instructions relative to the behavior "Door". Indeed it works, but I now see that I have to invert the direction of the rotation (I'll do it in my next experiments).

Here is the link to a shared folder on my Microsoft OneDrive : https://1drv.ms/u/s!AjokN1FU3jK1l2h51UGSin8YqxHX?e=mf2lyA : included the Blender Project + the GLTF file and the DBO + FPE files of my GG Max user folder.
When I imported the GLTF file, I rescaled the door ( 100 -> 50) . I had to import manually the textures.

I found a good tutorial to rig and animate an item in Blender : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0g3Kw0WsO4

I do appreciate the help.

I don't think my issue is creating the animation (though I could be wrong). This is a simple keyframe animation. And if I bring the FBX file I'd exported back into Blender, the door is still animated. So, the animations are there, but MAX is just not seeing them. Also, as pointed out in the first post, I've done several tests with different "doors". In two of the examples, the animation is seen by MAX. So, the imported seems inconsistent to me. I really just want to check and see if the issue is me (user-error) or MAX. If it's a MAX issue, then I will report it on GitHub.