Problems With 3D Model Animation Downloaded From Mixamo

[Occult-Dev]

Hello, thanks for looking into this and trying to help.

So, the problem is as follows:

• I created a basic character using the program MagicaVoxel [ running under WINE as I am using Linux Mint 18 Mate as my OS ]
• I then upload a zip file [ containing the .obj, .mtl, and the texture .png exported from MagicaVoxel ] to Mixamo.com
• I rig my character using their auto-rigger, placing the rigging points in their respected positions
• Once uploaded to Mixamo, I choose an animation from their site
• I apply it to my character, then click 'Download'
• For the animation-download, I choose '.dae' and 'with skin' in the options in Mixamo
• Once downloaded, I extract the zip I get from Mixamo, and convert the .dae to .gtlf using the converter covered in the
  Superpowers docs [ I right-click my downloaded .dae, and choose 'open with collada2gltf' ]
• Doing the above steps results in a number of files, including the needed .bin & .gtlf files
• When I go to upload a static, non-animated model into Superpowers, things are mostly fine:
  • If I upload a .obj, everything is great
  • If I upload a .bin & a .gltf, the model shows up, but is rather small. Not a big deal, and could simply be an error on my end
• HOWEVER, if I create a new animation and try to upload the .bin & .gltf I get from Mixamo, the following happens
  • Superpowers responds by saying there was no animation found in the file, and nothing gets animated

I read that this may be due to how Mixamo handles animations, and that it only stores movement / not the actual bones or something like that.
Upon reading this, I attempted to import the .dae animation file into Blender and export it that way, but no luck there as when I try to upload this file into Superpowers, the skeleton gets misshaped and skewed, and my model gets horribly disfigured.
[ NOTE: I am very new to Blender and don't have much experience in dealing with animations, so I could be making a mistake on my end. I'm not quite sure I'm exporting the selected action right, but even still, I need to fix the issue of my model getting deformed in Superpowers ]

Again, thanks for taking the time to look over this. Let me know if there's something else you need from me, and I hope you're able to solve this!

Github Issue.zip

[elisee]

Ok so I can reproduce the problem.

I looked at DANCE ANIMATION from mixamo/thriller_part_3.gltf (it's JSON), and the animations contains an empty object so the glTF converter somehow loses the animation data in the conversion process. The animations in the COLLADA .dae file (which is XML) seem to look like bone animations? I'm not 100% sure because I don't know COLLADA too well (and it's an extensive format), but I compared with https://github.com/sparklinlabs/superpowers-asset-packs/blob/master/3d-character/character/animation/jump/Jump.dae and the structure looks similar at least.

The .gltf clearly doesn't have animation info, so Superpowers is not lying at least. Going through Blender is indeed the recommended path because we know it exports COLLADA in a way that the glTF converter will consume properly.

Did you try re-exporting the model itself from Blender, and not just the animation? Maybe Blender does something different there too. Also double check that the model object has no weird transform (translation, rotation, scale) on it. That could explain the crazy skewing that happens after import.

Hope that's helpful.

[Occult-Dev]

Hmm, so it looks like [ for whatever reason ] Blender was scaling my models down to 0.1 and rotating them along the x-axis by 90.
Removing these transformations did help reduce the funkiness in Superpowers, but the skeleton is still way off.
However, I don't know whose fault this is really. I doubt it's something to do with Superpowers as it's showing the skeleton being weird when I toggle it on in the model viewer [ nice feature by the way, thanks for that ], but in Blender the armature looks fine... Might be something weird with Mixamo? I can't say.

Thanks for the reply though, we're getting closer to the cause haha. If it's not too much trouble [ cause I know this might be a little time-consuming ], would you ever consider making a super simple / quick video showing how you do the models in Blender? You don't have to walk through each and every step, but just a quick overview of rigging the models, animating, and exporting them so that I can see what steps I might be missing / what options I'm not checking off? It would be super helpful!

Either way, thanks again for your help with this, and thanks for your wonderful work on Superpowers :)