One Bone Animation

2013-09-28T11:09:11Z

Martais meshes are driven by armature animation. As of now, it can't use shape keys directly. However, you can use bones to drive shapekeys:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daefcfoAGR8

But that is not the reason for this topic.

Even though Maratis requires your mesh to be rigged before importing into Maratis, it is actually a good thing. It is much easier to animate a mesh with an armature than a mesh without an armature.

By adding just ONE BONE to a mesh, you can get a door swing on a hinge, or even a character to walk through 3d space in Maratis. I was able to animate an object in the x,y,z planes in blender, and the animation got into Maratis perfectly (Although I thought Maratis didn't pick up those types of translations).

Say for instance you wanted a cyclical motion to happen on an object. Give it ONE BONE in Blender and animate it turning 360 degrees.

However! If you want your animation to be 60 frames long, your first keyframe should be at 0 and your last one at frame 61

You would export the animation from frame 0-60.

The reason you export from 0-60 rather than 0-61 is so that the animation will loop correctly (you don't want two frames the same or else you'll see a little jerk in your animation)

I am already getting some ideas on what to make with one bone animation. I will probably just make a bunch of animated props or something. My first one will be a door.

I will add examples here:
Door handle:

Maratis forum - One Bone Animation

One Bone Animation