Hi All,

Perhaps someone who has a better knowledge of Blender than me can suggest a few things?

Whilst my projects can load and display boned animation for the COLLADA format, I would also like to improve my existing simple keyframe animation system. Basically I export a model from Blender as Wavefront (.obj) and then use a quick 'n dirty tool to do the simple animation and export a basic .anm file (and then interpolate at runtime).

An example of the .anm file is:

# partname x y z rotx roty rotz
frame
head 0 0 0 0 90 0
body 0.1 3.4 5.2 0 0 0
frame
...

I am trying to cut down on the requirement of this internal tool and do all the 3D model stuff in Blender. Does anyone know of a way I can still export a model using a simple format like .obj and then also export a keyframe file separately?

I might be thinking of exporting a new model each frame and then run it through a small tool to work out what has moved and how much but this means I would need another quick 'n dirty step in the pipeline ;)

Any ideas? If not I might have to write a plugin for Blender but tbh I am worried that since Blender is a fast evolving open-source project, the maintenance required to keep the plugin in sync with the API could be quite a lot more work than a seperate tool.

I might be thinking of exporting a new model each frame and then run it through a small tool to work out what has moved and how much but this means I would need another quick 'n dirty step in the pipeline ;)
 
Any ideas? If not I might have to write a plugin for Blender but tbh I am worried that since Blender is a fast evolving open-source project, the maintenance required to keep the plugin in sync with the API could be quite a lot more work than a seperate tool.