[SOLVED] Advice for animation

CT_Eagle

I made a door in blender as well as an animation for opening the door. I looked around the internet and there are several options for exporting an animation from blender and then using the animation in Godot. Since there are several ways to do this, i thought I would ask the community the following:

What is the latest standard method for exporting simple animations from Blender 2.8?
What resources are available that demonstrate how to use the animation in Godot?

Thank you.

beanpuffs

Use DAE. It is the only available open source file system for 3D so it is the best supported in Godot. For Blender you will have to use this plugin to have any luck with exporting readable DAE files though.

It is also best to have your animations made in the action editor in blender as this plugin will separate the animations nicely in that format.

When exporting with this plugin, take a look at the export options also as there are a lot of important things you may otherwise look over, like how the Tris will be ordered (I believe Godot says it prefers "Fan") and whether animations will be exported with your file or not. Very helpful!

When you open the DAE file in Godot it will ask to make a new Inherited Scene and then should set it all up for you so that you will have all animations in an AnimationPlayer linked up to your model. Looking at how the AnimationPlayer works is a good place to start to know how animations in 3D work; there are lots of good videos about it and I'm sure you'll find what you need help with with just a quick search.

CT_Eagle

I followed your the link you provided and copied the files as instructed. The Collada exporter is not showing up under User Preferences. Is there a step that I am missing?

TwistedTwigleg

I’m fairly certain Blender 2.8 does not support the Better Collada plugin. I believe GLTF is the recommended format for 3D, though I could be wrong. This post on GamesFromScratch looks like it explains how to export for Godot 3.2.

Also, as I mentioned in this post on the forums, someone seems to have ported the Better Collada plugin for Blender 2.8, which may be worth looking into. You can also use Blender 2.7 to export Blender files with the official Better Collada plugin, assuming the files are compatible. I’ve been using Blender 2.7 with Godot 3.2 and the Better Collada file and it works decently, at least for now. I’ll probably have to update to Blender 2.8 eventually, but for me Blender 2.7 is still workable.

CT_Eagle

@TwistedTwigleg Thank you for that link. Using the gltf export as described worked perfectly. The model, materials, textures and animations all exported to Godot with no problems.