Thursday - April 17, 2008

Tips for Importing Characters (Animated, Skinned Meshes) into XNA Game Studio.

1)  Download the skinned mesh example, compile, and run the C# program.

2)  You should see a soldier-type character with a blue background.  You can move the camera.

3)  The dude.fbx file under the content folder of this skinnedSample is the file that contains the character and animation that you see.

4)  In Maya, have your character mesh standing on the origin (delete hist and freeze transformations to make sure it's clean).

5)  Make sure that the "fbx" plug-in is loaded under the Settings/Preferences->Plug-in Manager if it's not already.  Maya 2008 may have the latest version, but if not find fbx download on Autodesk's site and install the latest.  (When you export from the file menu in Maya and choose .fbx from the pull down tab, you should see version 200611 on the right side of the window that pops up where it lets you choose your version).

6)  So far, animations on the joints definitely work.  I have not gotten IK-handle-driven animation to work, yet, but baking the animation may make this work.

7)  Select your mesh and shift-select your animated skeleton in the outliner of Maya, and then choose File->Export.  Make sure that .fbx is chosen in the pull-down menu.  The default settings are mostly fine.  Embed texture seems to work, though.  

8)  Once your .fbx file is generated, drag it into the "content" list in VisualStudio (find dude.fbx and drag it where it's located).

9)  Right-click on your .fbx in the content list and in the properties, change the XNA Content Processor to "SkinnedModelProcessor" -- if your file wasn't compiling before this but complaining of "No SkinningData", that's why.

10)  Re-build your solution and run -- should see your mesh.  (Cross your fingers).

For some more info, see some of these forums:

 http://forums.xna.com/thread/45246.aspx

11)  Getting your 3D game working in XNA shouldn't be too much worse than Irrlicht if you manage to get your character loaded in here.  There seems to be an issue choosing which frame-range, but we can probably work around that.