Supported Blender Animation Types

The following Blender animation types are exportable to the DTS file format as node animations:

• Object Animations - Object Loc, Rot, and Scale keyframes on the Blender NLA timeline
• Action animations (bone poses) - Bone Loc, Rot, and Scale keyframes stored within actions.  Actions should be laid out on the NLA timeline as Action Strips

DTS animation types created through the exporter user interface

The following animation types are created using the exporter user interface:

• Mesh visibility animations - created using the visibility animations panel of the exporter user interface
• Image File List (IFL) animations - created using the IFL animations panel of the exporter user interface

Defining Sequences on the NLA Timeline

Sequences are defined on Blender's NLA timeline through the use of Blender's timeline markers.  Two specially named markers are used to define the start frame and end frame for each sequence.  Sequence start marker names should contain the name of the sequence, followed by ":start"; for example "mySequence:start".  Sequence end marker names should contain the name of the sequence, followed by ":end"; for example, "mySequence:end".

See Also: Blender Survival Guide - Creating and renaming timeline markers

Links to more information on the different animation types available in the DTS file format can be found below.  There are two types of DTS animations that are not currently supported by the Blender DTS Exporter as of version 0.97, Texture UV Animations and Mesh Morph animations.  Support for these two animation types may be added in future versions of the exporter.