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9. Animation


CopperCube supports realtime 3D character animation, also known as skeletal animation. This is done using an animated skeleton consisting of joints with a skin of vertices. You can model and animate animated characters using any 3d software, exporting this into one of the following file formats and importing them into Coppercube:


9.1 Recommended Software


There is a lot of 3d modelling software available for doing 3D character animation. This table lists some of the recommended software and the related exporters:

3D Modelling Software Exporter Comment
Milkshape unecessary Milkshape is a low cost 3d modelling and animation software. CopperCube imports Milkshape .ms3d files directly.
3D Studio Max Panda Exporter for .x The Panda Exporter is a free plugin for 3D Studio Max and exports animated .x files from 3D Studio Max, which can be imported by CopperCube.
  B3d Pipeline B3d Pipeline includes an exporter an art pipeline from 3ds Max into the B3D format which can be imported into CopperCube.
Maya Microsoft .x exporter There exists an .x exporter plugin (including source in DirectX SDK) which can be compiled for various Maya versions.
Other   There are other tools and other exporters available on the web which can export to .ms3d, .b3d and .x files. If you want to add it to this list, simply contact us.

9.2 Importing and Editing


To import an animated character, use either the menu File -> Import -> Animated 3D Mesh or Click the 'Import animated Mesh' button on the 'Scene Editing' Tab.


Editing the displayed animation of an animated mesh



In the properties window of an animated mesh, you can set the correct Frames Per Second value changing the animation display speed, and set the name of the displayed Animation. In the beginning, you usually only have two animations to choose from: 'All' and 'None'. To define more animations out of the 'All' animation, you can select the 'edit' entry to open the Animation Editor. Alternatively, use the menu command 'View -> Show Animated Mesh Editor'. The editor will open up and look like this:


The animation editor



When selecting the 'All' animation, you can set the default Frames Per Second value in the right lower edit box. For adding a new Animation, simply click the '+' button and edit it's properties. In the example below, we defined the walk animation to go from frame 1 to 19, for example:


Defining an animation



After defining this animation, you can select it in the property window of the animated mesh to be played back, or using setSceneNodeAnimation(node, "walk") in ActionScript 3 or ccbSetSceneNodeProperty(sceneNode, "Animation", "walk") using JavaScript.

Using the context menu in the Animation editor, you can reload the animated mesh from disk, create another instance of that mesh in the scene, rename the file, and other additional features.


Context menu in the animation editor