Lab 8: Character Animation

• This lab will not be a regular programming lab. Instead, you will be working inside of the Blender 3D modeling and animation package and then just quickly test your results in a simple Panda 3D program (see below).

1. Make sure you have downloaded and installed Blender from http://www.blender.org.
2. Make sure you have the Chicken EGG exporter downloaded and set up in your Blender script directory.
3. Unzip this Blender model into your model directory.
4. Create the following python program in your working directory (it will not run yet because the model is missing):

import direct.directbase.DirectStart
from pandac.PandaModules import *
from direct.actor import Actor # To use animated Actors
 
bender = Actor.Actor("Models/g_char")
bender.reparentTo(render)
 
base.disableMouse()
base.camera.setPos(0, -15, 0)
run()

• Now we will go through the process of preparing a very simple animation for playback inside Panda 3D. Just follow along.