Skinned mesh bow animation not playing

Help and Feedback Art Design Support
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#1

It’s actually just a pose (1 keyframe) but works perfectly on the animation editor and in Blender, but when I try to play in test mode nothing happens:

animation editor:

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I made this pose just for testing.

test mode:

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The bow should be rotated like in the editor, but nothing happens.

hierarchy:

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The motor 6D is disabled, I was using it to stick the bow to my viewmodel.

script:

local bow = workspace.bow
local bowTrack1 = bow.AnimationController.Animator:LoadAnimation(script.bowTest)

bowTrack1:Play()

There are no errors in the output, the script only runs after the game is loaded.

I’ve seen plenty of posts in the dev forum with the same problem I’m having, and most of the time their solution is “deleting the animation controller”, like this one:

But where would I load the animation? I already tried switching to Humanoid.Animator but the results are the same.

I also tried this solution:

But nothing changes.

I also tried re-uploading the animation and looks like the problem also isn’t this.

And yes, the animation under the script has the proper ID, I also tested importing to the Roblox animation editor. The ID is correct.

Originally I was trying to export the animation together with my ViewModel but looks like this plugin doesn’t support skinned meshes so I’m animating the bow and ViewModel together in Blender and exporting separately.

Also, my bow rig is using Ik bones if this changes anything.

Please, I already don’t like animating, but over it, there’s also this import-export game, and it’s getting me tired, any help is appreciated.

#2

Is there any reason you bow uses Ik? (have you tried it without the Ik?)

#3

I haven’t tried without IK, but animating a bow without IK is making my life 10+ times harder, it’s already a bit time-consuming with it as the rig is not perfect:

With this bow, the curve is small but is way more noticeable when on camera. Also, it’s a longbow, I’m planning to model another bow with a similar rig but that curves more (recurve bow), and animating these things without IK will make me go crazy (I’m not that good of an animator, IK helps me a lot)

I haven’t tried without IK, if it works I’m pretty sure there’s some workaround, the plugin I mentioned allows me to use IK on the r15 when animating on Blender:

And when importing it looks fine:

The plugin probably registers the orientation of the non-ik bones in every keyframe when exporting from Blender (bakes the animation) but as it doesn’t support skinned meshes how can I do something similar with bones?

I can’t test anything right now but later today I’ll see if without the IK bones it works. Thank you for your reply and suggestion!

#4

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I tested it right now, worked, seems like I’ll have to remove all bone constraints from every bone in Blender (the animation remains the same, only the rig gets compromised, but it’s easily fixable with ctrl+Z), and then export the animation as FBX with the built-in Blender option and import it on the Roblox Studio animation editor.

Now I only have to figure out how to sync and position the bow animation with the ViewModel animation properly, I wish that plugin had support for skinned meshes :sob:

Thank you @Hazelfluff!

1 Like
#5

Ive done this before- I had custom mesh guns with magazines that were removable and attachments like scopes that had to be placed at exact positions.

Roblox has Attachments to bones that well support Rigid Constratins but they are very limited. The way I got around this was to have a root bone at origin (0,0,0) and all my animation and components used that as a reference. When scripting I updated the position to ensure it was at (0,0,0) during render updates.

Not the nicest solution unfortunately but its possible- just very painful to do.

#6

I tried something similar: a motor6d connected to the hand with an offset, however, it didn’t turn out well, to change the position of the bow I had to adjust it by script, and I assume your solution has the same problem, it is just a pain to handle it all.

I just gave up on it curving, now I’m working on a gun but when I go back to the bow I’m planning to animate only the string (with beams), it’s the best solution because everything becomes only 1 animation and is just way easier to handle as a whole.

If it was a gun (I suppose rigid, not deformable like bows that curve, meat weapons, etc.) why didn’t you just use motor6Ds? They always keep the correct offset and are way easier to handle, I’m animating a gun on Blender right now, and it works fine, I’m just using cautioned’s plugin to convert the motor6Ds to bones and vice-versa.

#7

Unfortunately a year ago Caution’s updated blender plugin didnt exist and I was using Blender 2.79 with an old plugin that was atrociously buggy. I am just now finding out about the plugin which supports 4.0 :confused:

For Motor6D do you add a certain naming convention to create them upon import? For example to create attachments you create mesh objects with “_Att” suffixed ie (Hair_Att) to auto generate the attachment point when imported into Roblox Studio.

#8

Damn sad to hear that…

I think there is, just don’t know what, but I don’t do it with re-naming, just create the rig on Roblox instead of Blender (they’re motors after all), then when you export to Blender the motors will become bones, and when exporting to Roblox again the bones become motors.

#9

I followed this:

tutorial, on the final steps instead of going to the animation editor export the rig with cautioned’s plugin.