Notes:

• When using multiple armatures, make sure that there are no bone names duplicated between the armatures.  If two bones or nodes have the same name, the exporter will rename one of them and write a warning out the the export log file.

Blender bones contained within a Blender armature object are converted to DTS Nodes upon export.  Nodes are also automatically generated for empties and other object types.  DTS nodes serve several purposes, but are mostly used for animations involving rotation, translation, and scale. The engine also recognizes some specially named nodes for player character and vehicle shapes.

Pose Mode

Bone-node based animations that are exported from Blender must be created as Blender actions by keyframing bones in Blender's pose mode.  The actions are then laid out on the Blender NLA timeline using action strips, and the start and end of each sequence is marked using Blender's timeline markers.

See Also:

• Blender Survival Guide - Creating an action animation
• Blender Survival Guide - Creating action strips
• Blender Survival Guide - Creating and renaming timeline markers
• Blender Survival Guide - Creating skinned meshes
• DTS Animations - Node Animations - Skinned Mesh Animations
• DTS Meshes - Notes on Skinned Meshes
• Tutorial 7 - Creating a skinned mesh animation