HKXPack/HKXAnim - Animations in FO4

[DexesTTP]

Thread title may need to change again.

 

"Config for Exporting Animations from Max"?

 

Well, not really. As I said really early on in this thread, it's never bad to have an open-source alternative, especially when the current method uses soft that we aren't supposed to have anymore and is locked to one specific 3D software. It's exactly the same thing for the Blender Nif importer, by the way, which is being updated as we speak

 

In addition to that, there's still a lot of things a raw HKX editor is useful for, especially for other games (when I get around to support that).

 

But I guess I might not work as hard as I could to make that happen if there's already a way, and instead enjoy the game and what will happen to it in the next weeks I may or may not have dreamt of HKX files last night, so I might have to take a break anyways.

[pipdude]

Hah. Makes sense. I was just amused at how quickly our animation situation kept improving.

 

And what does an HKX dream look like?

[AsariX]

Hah. Makes sense. I was just amused at how quickly our animation situation kept improving.

 

And what does an HKX dream look like?

 

Ooooh, I know, I know!

Remember that part where you walk through Kellog's brain and how those grey/purplish nodes form a path? In a HKX dream, each of those nodes is a potential tentacle trap!

[Vioxsis]

Do you think you can try adding a dismemberment/segment modifier to it and assigning triangles to the fixed numbers for left arm, left leg, right arm, right leg and torso?

 

Yes, probably, most likely, yes.

 

Without having to edit the CBBE body in some way so that vertex count, order and topology stays the same?

 

No not really, the topology is, well, not the best..

 

 

 

 

 

 

The edge flow don't match at all, though if i new how the 'meat caps' looked like/being applied it might help but looking in the mesh .bs2 i found only the neck.

 

Well I've got nothing to do, i could give a rough shot at doing it if you want, just to see if it even works at all.

[ousnius]

 

Do you think you can try adding a dismemberment/segment modifier to it and assigning triangles to the fixed numbers for left arm, left leg, right arm, right leg and torso?

 

Yes, probably, most likely, yes.

 

Without having to edit the CBBE body in some way so that vertex count, order and topology stays the same?

 

No not really, the topology is, well, not the best..

 

 

 

 

 

 

The edge flow don't match at all, though if i new how the 'meat caps' looked like/being applied it might help but looking in the mesh .bs2 i found only the neck.

 

Well I've got nothing to do, i could give a rough shot at doing it if you want, just to see if it even works at all.

 

We can't and won't be changing the topology because of slider and outfits compatibility. That's why I have to get dismemberment working for CBBE without having to touch anything about the other parts of the mesh.

 

Sure, you can try - the only condition is vertex count and order having to stay the same, or I wouldn't be able to use it.

Even if that means the dismemberment won't have clean cuts for all edges.

 

The plugins are reordering the triangles so that the segment data can be written properly, however the triangle order doesn't matter for sliders, just the vertex order, so that's fine.

[lordescobar666]

I am currently comparing a Sexlab hkx file with a Fallout 4 hkx file (better said their xml dumps), and they look pretty similar to me. I even constructed a "Frankenstein" xml by copying the animation and the animation binding blocks from the Sexlab animation into the Fallout 4 file. The Havok Standalone Tool reads that file without problem and converts it into a 2014 hkx.

 

What about reusing the Skyrim animation pipeline with a FO4 skeleton, and then converting the hkx file into the new format?

[Guest]

 

What about reusing the Skyrim animation pipeline with a FO4 skeleton, and then converting the hkx file into the new format?

 

Good point.

[D_ManXX2]

Does anyone know of current tools support for fallout ?? is blender now a better option or am i forced to relearn a new animation tool like 3dmax ??

 

 

 

 

 

 

3dmax just don't like my pc so if 3dmax is the only option i am not able to dive into this.

[Guest]

Does anyone know of current tools support for fallout ?? is blender now a better option or am i forced to relearn a new animation tool like 3dmax ??

 

 

 

1.gif

 

 

 

3dmax just don't like my pc so if 3dmax is the only option i am not able to dive into this.

 

There is an OOB plugin for Max 2013. The only one I am aware of.

Blender has no support yet. (As far as I know.)

[Vioxsis]

We can't and won't be changing the topology because of slider and outfits compatibility. That's why I have to get dismemberment working for CBBE without having to touch anything about the other parts of the mesh.

 

Sure, you can try - the only condition is vertex count and order having to stay the same, or I wouldn't be able to use it.

Even if that means the dismemberment won't have clean cuts for all edges.

 

The plugins are reordering the triangles so that the segment data can be written properly, however the triangle order doesn't matter for sliders, just the vertex order, so that's fine.

 

Spent the entire day with that plugin yesterday, its nice being able to setup all the shader stuff in the material editor but not being able to import a nif is annoying.

 

Though nothing has come of it, i guess it was to much to hope that the dismemberment was hard coded.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/462g0weij62xb81/FemaleBody.nif

^ the partitions and sub partitions are painted to match the vanilla body (though the order of the subs are different for some reason..)

But no dice, there is still something missing.

 

Comparing it with the vanilla, one thing i noticed is in the Sub Index Part 2 vanilla has SSF Length 54 and then a list of 54 SSF files.

I remember seeing an SSF file in the CharacterAssets mesh folder, opening it with notepad showed a list of 8 limbs (calf, thigh, forearm, biceps both L/R)

Though it also had "DISABLED" in it to so that and the fact it doesn't match up with the partitions well makes me think its not used.

 

Another thing of note was the Sub Index Record vanilla had some with Extra Data while none of the ones i exported had any.

 

 

In all likely its probably a havok thing, given you can not export a BS part selection modifier without the Rigid Body modifier in the stack.

Hmmm if this plugin could import nifs it would help with finding out what's going on or at least give me an insight to how a vanilla mesh looks.

 

Also the vertex count changes on export, i think it is adding verts where 2 partitions are meeting (would have to test that though) given that the triangle count is not inflating with it.

[canderes]

You can view which partition has what geometry in the creation kit. Since not all items can be previewed as statics like the robot parts you can just paste the path to say an armor treat it as a duplicate of a simple item like the rare clock, and then use the Havok preview you get if you right click on its entry in the reference window. Saidenstorm had some weird hex editing  procedure that he said was required for exporting certain models, not sure if it relates to segments but it is in that creation kit forum. You can have the both the Bethesda plugin and the figment exporter installed on max as well. Bummer that the collision export on the Bethesda plugin is too old, but it could possibly export concave collision geometry for skyrim.

 

There is a segment modifier included with the Bethesda plugin. I never compared the output of the Bethesda one to that generated by the shapes from the figment plugin, but if i recall the figment plugin doesn't correctly load the polygon selections segment/subsegment. You have to unlock the segments before you can add other geometry, but sometimes it causes crashes on export or gives you some weird complaint about parts of the mesh not being assigned to segments (even if they are all assigned.)  

[ousnius]

 

We can't and won't be changing the topology because of slider and outfits compatibility. That's why I have to get dismemberment working for CBBE without having to touch anything about the other parts of the mesh.

 

Sure, you can try - the only condition is vertex count and order having to stay the same, or I wouldn't be able to use it.

Even if that means the dismemberment won't have clean cuts for all edges.

 

The plugins are reordering the triangles so that the segment data can be written properly, however the triangle order doesn't matter for sliders, just the vertex order, so that's fine.

 

Spent the entire day with that plugin yesterday, its nice being able to setup all the shader stuff in the material editor but not being able to import a nif is annoying.

 

Though nothing has come of it, i guess it was to much to hope that the dismemberment was hard coded.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/462g0weij62xb81/FemaleBody.nif

^ the partitions and sub partitions are painted to match the vanilla body (though the order of the subs are different for some reason..)

But no dice, there is still something missing.

 

Comparing it with the vanilla, one thing i noticed is in the Sub Index Part 2 vanilla has SSF Length 54 and then a list of 54 SSF files.

I remember seeing an SSF file in the CharacterAssets mesh folder, opening it with notepad showed a list of 8 limbs (calf, thigh, forearm, biceps both L/R)

Though it also had "DISABLED" in it to so that and the fact it doesn't match up with the partitions well makes me think its not used.

 

Another thing of note was the Sub Index Record vanilla had some with Extra Data while none of the ones i exported had any.

 

 

In all likely its probably a havok thing, given you can not export a BS part selection modifier without the Rigid Body modifier in the stack.

Hmmm if this plugin could import nifs it would help with finding out what's going on or at least give me an insight to how a vanilla mesh looks.

 

Also the vertex count changes on export, i think it is adding verts where 2 partitions are meeting (would have to test that though) given that the triangle count is not inflating with it.

 

The only way I managed to not make it change the vertex count (I tried everything in Max there is to try) was to use Figment's plugin instead.

 

We've also tried to figure it out the past 1-2 days and we have a NIF with correct vertex count and segments, but no real subsegments. It also doesn't do anything in-game.

[Vioxsis]

The only way I managed to not make it change the vertex count (I tried everything in Max there is to try) was to use Figment's plugin instead.

 

We've also tried to figure it out the past 1-2 days and we have a NIF with correct vertex count and segments, but no real subsegments. It also doesn't do anything in-game.

I've not been able to get it to export with the same vert count using the official  plugin its adding more of them on export, somewhere, for some reason.

 

 

Though i did find out some stuff about the .ssf file found in the character assets folder, if you open up the nif with the CK you can make one by assigning sub-segments to 'body parts'.

 

 

 

 

 

I matched it with vanilla, and saved it creating the .ssf (it names it what the nif is named and will auto load one with the same name), also you can't assign anything to segments (like the torso) as they don't show up.

 

But even after making one for it nothing changed in game, still no dismembering. 

 

[ousnius]

I am currently comparing a Sexlab hkx file with a Fallout 4 hkx file (better said their xml dumps), and they look pretty similar to me. I even constructed a "Frankenstein" xml by copying the animation and the animation binding blocks from the Sexlab animation into the Fallout 4 file. The Havok Standalone Tool reads that file without problem and converts it into a 2014 hkx.

 

What about reusing the Skyrim animation pipeline with a FO4 skeleton, and then converting the hkx file into the new format?

 

I've tried creating a pose today but it didn't really work out properly in-game.

It appears fully broken, stretched and scaled in-game.

 

I've been using both your CBBE FBX, the modder's ressource FBX of CBBE and importing the NIF file directly.

The pose exports to HKX just fine and it shows in the Havok preview, but in-game no success.

 

Is this because the rig coming with the FBX/NIFs isn't sufficient/wrong?

[lordescobar666]

I've tried creating a pose today but it didn't really work out properly in-game.

It appears fully broken, stretched and scaled in-game.

 

I've been using both your CBBE FBX, the modder's ressource FBX of CBBE and importing the NIF file directly.

The pose exports to HKX just fine and it shows in the Havok preview, but in-game no success.

 

Is this because the rig coming with the FBX/NIFs isn't sufficient/wrong?

 

The fbx i posted is bad, it has the wrong offset, and also some bones have the wrong position (especially the under arms and finders). This can be corrected to some extend, but there is also something else I found out. The skeleton in skeleton.hkx has fewer bones than the skeleton in skeleton.nif. All the bones ending with _skin are missing, and the order of the bones seems also a bit different (but this could be a conversion artefact).

 

Using only the subset of the bones that are also in the skeleton.hkx I was able to put a pose into the game which at least resembles a human beings. It has a unnatural streched spine, a broken arm and some very long finger(nails), but I assume that this is caused by wrong bone positions.

 

Currently I am trying to get the hkx skeleton into blender. I found a very interesting tool for converting 2014.1 32-bit hkx files into fbx: havok2fbx. But how to get the xml output from hkxpack into the 32-bit format?

 

Edit: For reference, this is the list of bones found in the skeleton.hkx (in correct order):

 

 

Root

COM

Pelvis

LLeg_Thigh

LLeg_Calf

LLeg_Foot

RLeg_Thigh

RLeg_Calf

RLeg_Foot

Spine1

Spine2

Chest

Neck

Head

LArm_Collarbone

LArm_UpperArm

LArm_ForeArm1

LArm_ForeArm2

LArm_ForeArm3

LArm_Hand

RArm_Collarbone

RArm_UpperArm

RArm_ForeArm1

RArm_ForeArm2

RArm_ForeArm3

PipboyBone

RArm_Hand

WeaponLeft

Weapon

WeaponBolt

WeaponExtra1

WeaponExtra2

WeaponExtra3

WeaponMagazine

WeaponMagazineChild1

WeaponMagazineChild2

WeaponMagazineChild3

WeaponMagazineChild4

WeaponMagazineChild5

WeaponOptics1

WeaponOptics2

WeaponTrigger

LArm_UpperTwist1

LArm_UpperTwist2

RArm_UpperTwist1

RArm_UpperTwist2

LLeg_Toe1

RLeg_Toe1

LArm_Finger11

LArm_Finger12

LArm_Finger13

LArm_Finger21

LArm_Finger22

LArm_Finger23

LArm_Finger31

LArm_Finger32

LArm_Finger33

LArm_Finger41

LArm_Finger42

LArm_Finger43

LArm_Finger51

LArm_Finger52

LArm_Finger53

RArm_Finger11

RArm_Finger12

RArm_Finger13

RArm_Finger21

RArm_Finger22

RArm_Finger23

RArm_Finger31

RArm_Finger32

RArm_Finger33

RArm_Finger41

RArm_Finger42

RArm_Finger43

RArm_Finger51

RArm_Finger52

RArm_Finger53

Camera

Camera Control

AnimObjectA

AnimObjectB

WeaponIKTargetL

WeaponIKTargetR

WeaponIKTargetLMirror

WeaponIKTargetRMirror

AnimObjectL1

AnimObjectL2

AnimObjectL3

AnimObjectR1

AnimObjectR2

AnimObjectR3

L_RibHelper

R_RibHelper

CamTarget

 

 

[ousnius]

If you can get it working nicely, some instructions or maybe a rig file, or project file, would be very appreciated.

[lordescobar666]

If you can get it working nicely, some instructions or maybe a rig file, or project file, would be very appreciated.

 

"Working nicely" is the wrong term. The workflow I currently use is convoluted as fuck and constantly changing. I am basically experimenting with the Havok Content Tools. I have already descriped my setup here. I have attached the rig I am using (it is still not perfect). When you export it into 3ds max you have to make sure that units is set to meter (max uses inches by default, which completely messes up the scale), and that the bones are "left as bones". I then export the pose with the havok content tools as xml, manually correct the animation bindings so that they fit the skeleton in the skeleton.hkx, and at last I convert the corrected xml with the havok standalone tools into a hkx file. As soon as I have a more stable workflow I will post a more detailed description.

 

I also discovered that the skeleton.hkx not only has fewer bones than the skeleton.nif, but also additional bones which you cannot find in the skeleton.nif. Accounting for this I was able to get rid of the broken arm and the really long fingers, but now I have broken fingers. I definitely need to get the skeleton from the skeleton.hkx into blender to see if my currently used skeleton is causing this.

 

I also successfully used hkaInterleavedUncompressedAnimation instead of hkaSplineCompressedAnimation as animation format. I think this could be a major breakthrough because the hkaInterleavedUncompressedAnimation is much easier to understand and generate (hkaSplineCompressedAnimation is the compressed form of hkaInterleavedUncompressedAnimation, and uncompressed stuff is always much easier to understand than their compressed counterpart). It stores a transformation vector with 12 elements per bone and per frame. We just need to understand what each of the 12 elements mean (e.g. the first three elements for the root bone control the actor movement), then it should not be a problem to generate those vectors from e.g. a fbx animation.

 

FO4-CBBE.rar

[crusher]

Here's hoping Bethesda eventually releases something more robust for animation development and workflow. I've been vacillating between CK and CryEngine; following rumors a full developers CK is coming our way.  More interest in 3rd Person Melee Combat, in a sandbox environment (obvious dovetail with sexual content).  RYSE assets for CryEngine are available and is a pretty nice melee fighter, but .. no sandbox (but, multiplay option, built into CryE).

 

Wasteland Workshop set up some nice groundwork for "1on1 Arena" styled combat -- could be a sign, a portent. I did some modding for multiplayer arena combat in JediKnight II, Heretic II, Rune in UnrealEd/QuakeEditor, would like to bring that forward. 

 

Two things Bethesda should do to energize the F4 ip, 1) provide robust workflow for animation development; 2) promise Multiplayer (peer to peer). 

 

... just gonna stay here --on this fence-- picking nose, flicking boogers. 

 

edit; here's an interesting way to trigger an animation: Below the Belt

[ag12]

Just dropping by to leave some motivation.

Great work so far! Keep it up and I'm looking forward to seeing your progress on what is hopefully going to end the animation drought.

 

Kudos to you, sir!

[lordescobar666]

I am getting strange results when I use HKXPack to unpack and then re-pack a hkx I created with havok content tools.

 

I created the attached anim06-havok.hkx with HCT (it contains both an animation and a skeleton, the anim06-havok.xml is the corresponding xml output from HCT), then I unpacked it with hkxpack (attached anim06.xml), and re-packed it (attached anim06.hkx).

 

The numbers in the xml outputs (e.g. /hkpackfile/hksection/hkaSkeleton/referencePose or /hkpackfile/hkaInterleavedUncompressedAnimation/transforms) are different. When I open the anim06.xml in the havok preview tool, then animation is completely wrong.

 

Also the hkx files differ, but when I open the anim06.hkx in the havok preview tool, the animation is ok.

 

When I use hkxpack to pack the anim06-havok.xml then havok preview tool won't even load the resulting hkx file.

anim06.hkx.7z

anim06.xml

anim06-havok.hkx.7z

anim06-havok.xml

[DexesTTP]

I am getting strange results when I use HKXPack to unpack and then re-pack a hkx I created with havok content tools.

 

I created the attached anim06-havok.hkx with HCT (it contains both an animation and a skeleton, the anim06-havok.xml is the corresponding xml output from HCT), then I unpacked it with hkxpack (attached anim06.xml), and re-packed it (attached anim06.hkx).

 

The numbers in the xml outputs (e.g. /hkpackfile/hksection/hkaSkeleton/referencePose or /hkpackfile/hkaInterleavedUncompressedAnimation/transforms) are different. When I open the anim06.xml in the havok preview tool, then animation is completely wrong.

 

Also the hkx files differ, but when I open the anim06.hkx in the havok preview tool, the animation is ok.

 

When I use hkxpack to pack the anim06-havok.xml then havok preview tool won't even load the resulting hkx file.

I'll check what is happening. I never dealt with uncompressed anims yet so it may be unhandled edge cases.

[lordescobar666]

I think I found a way to create custom animations without Havok Content Tools. Have a lok at the attached xml file. The interesting parts of the file are the animation itself (/hkpackfile/hksection/hkobject[class=hkaInterleavedUncompressedAnimation]) and the animation bindings (/hkpackfile/hksection/hkobject[class=hkaAnimationBinding]).

 

The animation consists of transformation tracks (one track per bone). An entry of such a tranformation track consists of a vector with 10 elements, the first 3 are the bone position, the next 4 are the rotation quarternion, and the last 3 are the scales. The transformation tracks are stored in the "transforms" element clustered by frame. For example. line 324 in myanimation.xml is the entry for the Root bone in the first frame, line 325 is the COM bone in the first frame, line 401 is the root bone in the second frame, line 402 is the COM in the second frame, and so on. If I want to add a third frame I just need to append 77 lines with 10 elements each and fill in approbriate values. If I want to add more bones I just need to add more tracks.

 

The animation bindings bind those transformation tracks to the bones defined in the skeleton.hkx. I posted the complete bone list somewhere above. The indices defined there need to match the order of the bone list.

 

What we now need is a suitable skeleton we can use to create animations, and some scripts to generate the transformation tracks from a blender or max animation. And hkxpack needs to be fixed to create an actual working hkx from the attached xml.

 

myanimation.xml

[DexesTTP]

Really nice.

 

I studied the file you gave with an animation in it. There's another section I never saw not empty at the top, the "__types__" section. Now that I know how it works, I feel like I could make HKXPack read it... but it will probably take some time.

 

However, the data in this section seems to only describe the classes without having any impact on the file contents, so I'd be surprised if this was what would break the HKXPack converted file.

 

The difference between the numbers is actually in the likes of a consistent 8th significant number, which is due to the slightly different binary => float conversion I'm passing the numbers through from the HCT tools. This shouldn't impact any of the animations, as these values should be not visible to the unaware observer. I'm also writing the 10-numbers matrix as they really are in memory, which is 12 number matrices, because sometimes the wrong data structure is used and all 12 numbers have an use.

 

Finally, I use slightly different structures between my XML and the Havok one, because I couldn't easily reproduce some of the original XML features. This is apparent mostly in the floats formatting, which is weirdly inconsistent in the Havok XML and above all has a precision loss that can't be accepted if HKXPack is the main conversion tool. SO I don't think HCT can read my XML, just my HKX file which should be perfectly valid.

 

 

Thank you so much about this data, by the way. With these informations, I feel like I could write a HKXAnim "BVH => HKX" converter in not too much time. I'll try to do exactly that then.

[lordescobar666]

Glad to be of help.

 

The "__types__" section is not really important. You can remove it completely from the file and havok content tools can still read it fine.

 

 

 

I'm also writing the 10-numbers matrix as they really are in memory, which is 12 number matrices, because sometimes the wrong data structure is used and all 12 numbers have an use.

 

I have attached another xml that may shed some light into the 10 number matrices. I created the anim06-havok.xml I posted above by converting it from the hkx with the havok standalone tool. But there is also the option to directly export an xml from 3ds max, and when I do this the resulting xml has a different format than the one produces by havok standalone tool or hkxpack, and it contains 12 element matrices. When you compare it with the anim06-havok.xml you see that the 4th and the 12th number are omitted in the 10 element matrix. I suppose that havok always save 3 x 4-element vectors, but may omit elements from that vectors in the xml output when they are not needed (translation/scale only needs 3 values, so screw that 4-th value).
 

anim06-direct-export.xml

[DexesTTP]

I have attached another xml that may shed some light into the 10 number matrices. I created the anim06-havok.xml I posted above by converting it from the hkx with the havok standalone tool. But there is also the option to directly export an xml from 3ds max, and when I do this the resulting xml has a different format than the one produces by havok standalone tool or hkxpack, and it contains 12 element matrices. When you compare it with the anim06-havok.xml you see that the 4th and the 12th number are omitted in the 10 element matrix. I suppose that havok always save 3 x 4-element vectors, but may omit elements from that vectors in the xml output when they are not needed (translation/scale only needs 3 values, so screw that 4-th value).

 

That's actually spot-on. The official structure name is QsTransform, which may stand for "Quaternion Scaled transform" for the reasons you gave.

This also makes sense. The usual way to "transform" an object mathematically is either by a combinaison of actions (translate => rotate => scale) or by a transform matrix (a 3x3 matrix). To optimize the computation time, they'd use commands prebuilt to the GPU, in order used by a GPU.

 

About the extra numbers, most of the time, the 4th and 12th numbers are useless, but sometimes they aren't 0 and may crash/freeze the game if they aren't handled. This shouldn't matter for animations, but I'd rather be safe, especially since I handle all the data types the same way.

 

The XML file you gave me is pretty interesting, but all in all only gave us the same data in a different way. It's useful to confirm what we know though, so thanks.

 

About the XML files. I was able to deduce that 77 * 101 = 7777 (yay me), so I'm guessing there's 101 "frames" in the time the animation plays. There's also 3.3333.... seconds of execution, so assuming that there's an origin frame (frame 0 would be a t=0), there's 30 frames per second written in the file <s> just enough for the human eye </s>. This means that I'm ready to write animation data in the files !

 

===========

 

Ok, so the workflow idea for animation creation is as follows :

 - Take a "base project" that starts with 0 frames written, with a (unrigged for now, maybe one day rigged) skeleton in the reference pose, in your go-to editor (e.g. a .blender or .fbx project).

 - Create your animation, and save it as a normal animation in the format you want.

 - Save it as the "input" format for the tool. You should only have created an animation, and that's it.

 - Convert the "input" format file to a HKX file using the tool. The order of the data then can be assumed if nothing important has been changed, otherwise the file will be invalid.

 - Get a HKX file that is an actual animation, and add it to the game as a new animation (using the relevant fields in the idle part)

 

This would not allow to go from HKX => other, as I don't think this is useful. This is actually a really good idea IMO, since people won't be able to "steal" animations and change them. However, mod authors are still able to share their .blend/.fbx/other projects with one another if they want,and each one of them can be converted.

 

===========

 

Now, about the input format :

 

BVH

I won't be able to use BVH file representation, as I think it can't define its own bones.

FBX

 

FBX is a closed source and undocumented format. I tried poking around for librairies, but the ones I could find were not useable nor documented either.

This would require understanding what the FBX files look like in Binary as there's no good Java library to extract them for me

XAF/XMM

 

I looked into XAF/XMM format too, but there's not much more documentation, in addition to not being handled by Blender. This would however be my go-to format if someone would give me some sample files to study... But I'm still trying to find a better alternative.

MD5Mesh/MD5Anim

 

This format seems really promising, because quite simple. However, it can't be natively used with either Blender or 3DsMax (requires plugins) and it doesn't have a dedicated Java library.

Blend

 

The .blend format is actually the hardest of them all. It's a memory dump of the Blender state at runtime, so not really much dice this way either

I'm seriously considering using a custom format and creating plugins... maybe it'd be easier after all. I'll still try to find an alternative before though.

 

 

Edit : I've actually found a good candidate. Collada format.

 

The Collada format seems to be a XML based, well specified file format. I would be able to use it.

 

There's also an 'official' Java library, called Java3D, that can import some other file formats, namely 3DS and X3D, taht can be exprted by Blender. If these formats are aslo availale as 3DsMax output formats, then I'll go for that.