Thanks Artfunkel, I was of the same opinion that it wasn't possible and had started to bone everything up for animating. But if you can work the magic that you do, this would be fantastic and a magnificent add on to your already most excellent tool.

Hmmm. @ Artfunkel...
Yup, I know that I can do that and was thinking about trying to do just that using SFMPhys.

But then I showed the mug animation to Rantis and he informed me that bake vertex animations are possible in SFM (as well as Dota2, but trying it in any other Source engine will crash the engine).

In fact I believe the latest version of MESA now has a button for exporting baked Mesh (Vertex) animations to SMD and also creates both the VTA and the qci for the animation. (I just can't find the dag page I saw it on again)

But, this, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZZ8xH_nvX0 (done by Cra0kalo), this tutorial http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1252740 (that I thought was done by narry) and the wing segment starting at :38 of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snRc_yQTK7U&list=UUtZwhdkGL9Hfg5a-iqRWTPQ talk about or are baked vertex animations; (not SFMPhys or boned animation effects)

This is what sparked this conversation and I was wondering if it might be an aspect you might know about how to do now using the current BLeST or be a feature you might be considering or working on for a future release.

Thanks

I have seen some pretty amazing stuff done with vertex animations out of Maya and have been told that both SFM and Dota2 support it.

I am wondering if it s possilbe to export vertex animations (ie cell fracture object) from Blender using BLeST without having to assign bones to every shard and animating by hand or via SFMPhys (if recreating the scenario is even possible)?

For example...

I have a mug that I broke into 50 shards using the Cell Fracture tool in Blender. I then recorded the mug exploding using the Blender Game Engine. The result is a vertex animation but as far as I can tell, BLeST doesn't see this type of animation; no bones move.

I am hoping that there is someway of using BLeST to export that animation to a DMX/SMD that can be used as an animation (or a sequence) in SFM.

http://youtu.be/bYwFYpbAZF4

If anyone knows of a way to do this or can recommend a tutorial/video showing how to do this from Blender using BLeST (without having to resort to Maya), it would be really great!!! I have a ton of ideas, but this is holding me back at the moment.

Thanks

Pte Jack

Thanks Vintage

Doh, as I said, something stupid... Just delete the engine path will bring the version selection utility back...

Hello Artfunkle,

Thank you for such a great tool. I'm having a bit of a problem though and it's probably something stupid.

Anyway, I open my model blend file and go to export to DMX. I have found that exporting as Bin2 Model 1 gives me that Texture problem where the model looks like it hasn't been smoothed when I import to SFM. But if I choose Bin2 Model 15 I get the Smooth version and the model looks right. (Just figured that out yesterday.)

The problem I am having is that if I forget to set the model type before I choose the engine, the ability disappears when I select the bin folder and accept it and I can't choose the type.

How do I get that version selection back or is the model type decided by the engine path?

Using BleST 1.10.4 and Blender 2.69

Thanks