Blender exporter not exporting model with animation at all

[dlinning]

Description of the problem

three.js blender exporter is not creating a .json file for a rigged(/animated) blender model.

I have attached the settings I am using to export the files, as well as my export settings. Blender will perfectly export the generic blender cube (when creating a new file), but will not even create a .json for both attached files.

I am trying to export to the path C:\Users\Doug\Desktop\Blender Objs\OUT.json

Three.js version

r75

Blender Version

2.77

OS

Windows

Person & PersonAnim (Blender .zip) (Neither export with default settings, ignoring animation)

[tschw]

Animation export seems to be disabled in the settings above.

There were many issues with the exporter in r75 and some of them have recently been fixed. Would you mind trying the dev branch? Also, please search the issues - AFAICT animation export is still pretty rough around the edges.

[dlinning]

Switching to the dev branch, and exporting the same model (Person.blend) still gave me no output file. (Default Export Settings)

Also, @tschw, I know that the animations are disabled. I was just trying to see if the default export would work. I knew I wasn't going to get animations. If animations are not enabled, then it should just output a still model, no?

[tschw]

still gave me no output file

It probably gave you an error, then. It's sometimes difficult to see the box that Blender shows in this case (disappears quickly).

Please check the log console. You can access it by drag-opening the view with the main menu (pull it down when everything is default).

[dlinning]

(I went to Window>Toggle System Console) Every time I run the exporter, I get the line Log: None and that's it.

EDIT: After enabling --debug-all in the console, I get

bpy.ops.export.three(filepath="C:\\Users\\Doug\\Desktop\\Blender Objs\\Person.js
on")
WM_operator_last_properties_store: storing properties for 'EXPORT_OT_three'

and still no .json being created.

[dlinning]

I apologize. I wasn't selecting the mesh when exporting.

[AndrewRayCode]

@FibreChips for rigged models, you must use the ObjectLoader and you must export the whole scene with hierarchy for it to work. The JSONLoader mangles rigged meshes (even though the file is .json)

These settings work for me. Do not select your mesh (or anything) and make sure the playhead is on the "idle" pose of your object before exporting. The process is brittle. Also note that currently morph targets ("shape keys" in blender) don't seem to be getting exported.

Hopefully this saves you some time.

[tschw]

@FibreChips

Every time I run the exporter, I get the line Log: None and that's it.
[ ... more info with --debug-all ]
I apologize. I wasn't selecting the mesh when exporting.

I think you should neither apologize nor close this ticket. Actually, this behavior is pretty damn quirky.

Even if nothing is selected for the export, the exporter should tell you that it expects something to be selected by properly raising an error condition.

@delvarworld
Thanks for filling in on the current workaround.

[dlinning]

Ah, okay thank you very much @delvarworld ! (And you too @tschw, you've been helping this whole time haha.

I closed it because I was unable to get the file to export, and now that I could I figured it was "closed". I guess I didn't expect more help -- Thankfully I was nicely surprised!

And now I can get the model to load in (Using ObjectLoader, and after rotating all axis -1.57 lol), but I can't for the life of me get the darn thing to animate. I can't seem to find any guides on animation using ObjectLoader, all of them seem to use JSONLoader. Would either of you be so kind as to direct me to a guide? (Or just show me the code example, whichever is easier!)

Thanks again!

[tschw]

@FibreChips
#8412 (comment) might be helpful

[AndrewRayCode]

@FibreChips The example that helped me the most is animation / skinning / blending. Threejs is missing a lot of documentation, and animation is no exception. That example uses a class called BlendCharacter. It's not documented, and whether or not end users are supposed to use it, who knows! If you need simple animations, you might be able to get away with just using that file. You can see the basic API on these lines

blendMesh = new THREE.BlendCharacter();
blendMesh.load( "models/skinned/marine/marine_anims_core.json", start );

Internally this uses the undocumented AnimationMixer class. You can see how it's used in this section of BlendCharacter.js. Mainly something like:

   var mixer = new THREE.AnimationMixer( skinnedMesh );

    // Create the animations
    for ( var i = 0; i < skinnedMesh.geometry.animations.length; ++ i ) {
        mixer.clipAction( skinnedMesh.geometry.animations[ i ] );
    }

I removed the scope stuff to show how you might start separating it from BlendCharacter.js if you need more control. The AnimationMixer class has gone undocumented through at least two releases of Threejs. Are we as end users supposed to use it? Again, who knows. But it's used in the examples, even though the official examples have lots of oddities like this import of AnimationClipCreator.js which is never used, or commented out code.

I don't know what the "right" way currently is in Threejs, but this is the only clear-ish path I've found through the maze so far to get animated meshes.

[AndrewRayCode]

Also to help navigate the maze, here's some other things I've discovered:

• You can't export "shape keys" (Blender's made up word for the more commonly known "morph targets") and rigged meshes in the same file, because checking "Apply Modifier" (needed to apply the armature rig to the mesh) in the exporter will clobber all shape keys.
• Make sure you're using the newest exporter from the dev branch, because until very recently normals were not exported correctly
• You may need to set your material side to THREE.DoubleSide because the Blender exporter may flip some faces of your mesh, and I'm not aware of any other workarounds.

Sorry to dump this all in a specific ticket. I plan to write a blog post about this process because it's really difficult to navigate right now.

[AndrewRayCode]

Finally, I just filed this issue because I just remembered it, where if you don't delete all of Blender's internal backup data (at least that's what I think it is), then your exported .json file will crash Three. A quick workaround, deleting the invalid top level "animations": [...] key from the exported JSON file, is what I've been doing for now.

[dlinning]

@delvarworld Thank you so much! That example looks really great, and is fairly close to what I'm looking for. Except... I can't get that to work at all haha. If you want to take a look at what I have so far, you can see it at http://dougs.website/sites/cardboard_issue/.

What's supposed to happen is the guy on your right (when the page loads) is supposed to be waving. He's not. The code that affect him can be found at http://dougs.website/sites/cardboard_issue/js/custom.js and also near the bottom of index.html.

Again, thank you so much for your help!