3DS - SD Scene Export
- thomas (Unlicensed)
Owned by thomas (Unlicensed)
This tutorial covers a typical workflow when trying to export to a RealFlow SD file. We will show you how to make a simple rigid body animation by placing some barrels in front of the octopus when it attacks the pirate.
- Open 3ds Max and load “..\scenes\pirateroom.max”. Since this scene was created in 3ds Max 9, this tutorial can only be used with 3ds Max versions 9 and above.
- There are 500 animated frames in this file and we want to export them all to an SD file. Press the "SD Export" toolbar button (see first icon below), and if this is the first time we are trying to export this scene, a dialog opens, letting us choose the settings for the SD file we want to export.
The "SD File Export" settings.
- Set deformation to “No”, since we do not want to export soft bodies or skinned meshes, and leave all the other settings at their default values. Set the export file path and hit “Export”. These settings will be saved in the scene, so another export will automatically use the settings we have already specified. If we want to change the settings for a future export, we can open the “SD File Export Settings” by pressing the appropriate toolbar button (see 2nd icon below):
- Open RealFlow and create a new project named “Pirateroom.flw” and then load the exported “pirateroom.sd”. If the scene is too big, you can use a different scale for it, like 0.01.
"Pirateroom.sd" file loaded in RealFlow.
- Add a gravity daemon to the scene.
- Select the barrels from the right ("barril", "barril01", "barril02", "barril03"), and in order to be able to move them, click on the "SD<>Curve" button under the “Node params” rollup. Move them to the left and place them between the pirate and the octopus, so when the octopus tries to grab the pirate, it will hit them.
Barrels placed between the pirate and the octopus.
- Keeping the current barrels selected, select the “barril04” object too. On the “Node Params” set “Dynamics” to “Rigid Body”, and on the “Rigid Body” rollup set “Dyn motion” to “Yes”.
- Next, we set the pirate and the octopus to act as colliders, but unaffected by gravity. Select all "Bip*" objects for the pirate and “Sphere04“, “Sphere06“, “Sphere08“, “Sphere09“ ,“Sphere10“ for the octopus. On the “Node params” rollup, set “Dynamics” to “Rigid Body” and set “Dyn motion” to “No”.
- The room objects need to be set up as static colliders. Select “Plane02”, “Line07”, “Line07”, “Object01”, and “Object02”, set “Dynamics” to “Rigid Body” and “Dyn motion” to “No”.
- Simulate from frame 0 and export all objects from the scene. You can verify that by checking the export setting from the Export > Export Central ... (F12) menu.
"Export Central" dialogue for the "Pirateroom.flw" scene.
- Now it is time to import the simulated scene in 3ds Max. There are two import options available: We can import the “animation.sd” file in a new 3ds Max scene or we can import it over our existing “pirateroom.max” scene. The second option is more advantageous, since it will only modify the animation for the objects, keeping the current object modifiers applied. By using the first option, the plugin will create all objects at import time as "Editable Mesh" objects. The import is simply done by pressing the "SD Import" toolbar button. A “File Open” dialog will open, letting us choose the path to the “animation.sd” file.
