Tutorial: Exporting Animation Data From Blender 2.5 API

Strictly speaking I shouldn't be uploading this tutorial yet because I have not imported the exported data into a 3d environment. But then the script illustrated is basically a compilation of the bundled export_mdd.py and the export_ply.py scripts, so if they work, then unless I tripped somewhere mine should to. I do know that the script exports what looks like the right sort of numbers, and anyway, it might be useful as a foray into Blender 2.5's API as it exists as of NOW! Assuming the script is good, there should be little problem reconfiguring the data to output Java xml able to be usefully imported into a JOGL environment.

Here is the link:

https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B9hhZie2D-fEZGY1NGM1MDMtNGQwMS00ZjY3LTgzY2ItOGQ3MDUyYmMzZDk5&hl=en

Some 3D engines already support this format, JMonkeyEngine 2.0 for example (use my patches to use this engine with JOGL).

Great work!  I know first-hand how tedious it is to put together a step-by-step tutorial like this, but it really does help advance the community.

Does Google's spider eventually index the contents of these Google docs? It would be nice if people's keyword searches could hit against stuff inside the doc. I could find your doc via Google, but the search results were all to where you posted links in forums, not to the doc itself.

Thought I had better update this. The first issue does not correctly handle triangulation of objects out of Blender 2.5. This tutorial written for LWJGL but cross wise useful for JOGL corrects the triangulation and shows how to parse the exported file and render the model using glDrawArrays. The link is

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B9hhZie2D-fEYjRlMTg5YjAtODUwYy00YTE5LWE5NDgtN2EzYWMzZGY3NzE4&hl=en