animExport

animExport is a Blender Addon for exporting animation into a format usable in Arma 3 model.cfg files. anim2cfg is taken as foundation and animExport is built on top of it to provide ease of use.

Features

• Export of the (matrix_world) location/rotation of the active object(s) or bone(s) of an armature according to active animation.
• The location/rotation of the object may be animated/constrained.
• Export relative to a parent object is possible.

Installation

Blender:

• 'Edit' -> 'Preferences'
• Select the 'Add-ons' tab
• 'Install...'
• Navigate to the 'animExport.py' file and select it
• Install it by pressing 'Install Add-on from File...'
• Enable the addon by setting the checkmark in front of it

Known Issues

• The export of n frames resulting in only n-1 animation pairs is not a bug but by design

Please report any other issue at https://github.com/talyataya/animExport/issues

Usage

Blender:

• Choose the animation you want to export, make sure it is active animation by verifying through playback.
• If Armature mode will not be used, select object(s) in the Outliner.
• Go to 'File' -> 'Export' -> 'Arma 3 model.cfg (.cfg/.hpp)'
• Set the export options
  • 'Parent Object': Animations will be exported relative to this object. When not set the origin will be used.
  • 'Armature Object': If set, armature of this object will be used instead of selected object(s). Bone names are used as selection names.
  • 'Start Frame': Starting frame to export.
  • 'End Frame': End frame to export.
  • 'Selection Names': Selection names to be used in the model.cfg. Defaults to the name of the objects. Automatically retrieved from chosen objects in the Outliner.
  • 'Source Name': Source name to be used in the model.cfg.
  • 'Source Address': Does the Animation loop or not?
  • 'minValue': minValue to be used in the model.cfg for the first animation.
  • 'maxValue': maxValue to be used in the model.cfg for the last animation.
  • 'Precision': Number of decimal places.
  • 'Add Folder': Whether or not a folder will be created for additional files.(If only one object/bone exists, no folder will be created.)
  • 'Folder Name': Name of the generated folder. If unset, Source name will be used as folder name. If folder with same name exists, that folder will be used.
• Navigate the directory tree and set/select the file name (existing files will be OVERWRITTEN)
• 'Export model.cfg'

In a text editor of your choice:

• Prepare a basic model.cfg with all the necessary skeletonBones. You can use https://github.com/Talyataya/skelExport to extract skeletonBones, make sure you disable parent extraction.
• #include the exported file(s) within the Animations class of your model.cfg.

Changelog

v0.1.1:

• Added: sourceAddress can now be provided for loop, mirror options. (If clamp, output will not change as it is default value for Arma 3.)
• Fixed: Addon was crashing when run on Blender 2.80 in armature mode, due created objects by addon had a parameter that was not really needed and was not supported by 2.80.
• Fixed: The output of include file was modifying if a file with same name existed, instead of creating a fresh file.
• Fixed: Now preserves user's active frame instead of last frame the data was exported from.