Creating an Armory Compatible Animation in Blender



In the previous Animation tutorial, we looked at how to use animated objects in Armory and I mentioned a few times that the setup process was perhaps the biggest tripping point when trying to get animation to work. In this tutorial, we are going to show that process. Although this tutorial is technically 100% about Blender and not Armory, this is a key requirement to get animation to work, so let’s take things step by step and create a simple Armory ready animation.

Let’s start things off with a simple model that we are going to animate. I create a simple multi-segmented cylinder like the following:

Simple model - armory compatible animation in blender

Now create a new Armature ( Add->Armature->Single Bone ) like so:

Armature - Armory3D Tutorial

Now in edit mode, select the end bone, move it, then (E) extrude the tip so we have a rig like the following:

Creating an Armory Compatible Animation in Blender 2

Next switch to Object mode, select the mesh, then Shift-click to multi-select the armature in addition to the mesh, then hit Ctrl + P to parent the mesh to the armature and select With Automatic Weights:

Object Mode - Blender - Armory3D

We are now ready to start creating our animation. Now it’s time to start animating our scene. Select the armature and switch to pose mode. Hit A to select all the bones in our armature, then select I to insert a keyframe, select LocRotScale (overkill but… meh).

Insert Keyframe Menu - Blender - Armory3D

This creates a new keyframe at frame 0. Now lets advance to frame 25 and in pose mode modify things(move, scale and rotate our controlling bones), then select all the bones and set another keyframe, like so:

New Keyframe - Blender

Now repeat again at frame 50 so we have a lame but well-defined animation.

Animation - Blender

And preview our animation:

BlenderBendAnimation

Now switch to the NLA Editor, double click ArmatureAction and rename it to Bend. Now click the Push Action Down icon:

NLA Editor - Blender

Now select the newly created track NlaTrack and rename it Bend:

Clipboard-Image_8

Hit N to bring up the Properties panel, and rename Action Strip to match Bend if it isn’t already. Now you should be able to access your animation strip by name using Armory nodes:

Armory Nodes

Now let’s look at adding a Marker to our animation. Switch to the DopeSheet view and select Action Editor.

Dopesheet View

Now select Marker->Show Pose Markers

Pose Markers

Now in the timeline select about the midpoint (frame 25 in this example) and hit M (or select Marker->Add Marker). Now with the newly created marker selected hit Ctrl + M to rename the marker:

Rename Marker

Now with a marker defined you can respond to it with code like so:

Clipboard-Image_13

1 thought on “Creating an Armory Compatible Animation in Blender”

  1. Thank you.
    As of Armory_05alpha_win64_b27 in order to get the action strip to work:
    5b6eed34645c7d9390810800.png

    Markers doesn’t seem to work as this point.

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