LightWave - is this possible?

[sparten gage]

is it possible to take the animations from one model and use it for another?

i have several models that use the same skeleton and i was wandering if i could take the walking animation for one and use it for the others. i use LightWave 9.0-9.4 depending on whether or not I'm at school, but usually 9.0. if anyone can help it would be much appreciated.

[rustythe1]

if the skeleton is identicle and the weightmaps are the same, i guess the load items from scene would bring the animations with it, there are tutorials about using pre made skelletons but have not done it myself, but i guess what i am saying is it should be possible, just may need a little research.

[Afalk]

I have to think that it would be a lot like using BVH files to add animation sequences to a standard rig. I believe Rebel Hill has some video tutorials on it, and I would think that the process would work fine for you. (you can find his stuff on YouTube - just do a quick search!)

[Jedi2016]

Depends on how the skeletons are rigged to the model, I suppose. I seem to recall doing some stuff years ago where I could just replace the mesh with a new one, while leaving the skeleton as-is. The only thing I had to do was reassign the weight maps.

There's going to be some tweaking, adjustments, and some manual labor involved in moving a rig from one mesh to another, but it's definitely possible.

[Rigel]

In Layout, look at the File Menu. Under Save there is Save Motion File and under Load there is Load Motion File. As far as I know this is on a per bone basis, which means, whichever bone is selected is the only bone you will save a motion file for.

As long as you save all of the motion files for a single skeleton into the same folder and give each file the same name as a bone, you'll be okay. Yes, this is still a bit of work, but it's faster than setting up the key frames all over again.

The beauty of this system is that the skeletons don't need to be identical. Let's say you created a hand opening cycle for a human character with five fingers and want to use it on a cartoon character with three fingers. Since you will load the motion files one bone at a time, you don't need to load the files for the fourth and fifth fingers.

I believe it works best if the bones are the same length, rest position and rest rotation, but a little experimentation may prove otherwise.