I made a guide to setting up 3D Animations with Aether.Extras

Graphics
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I put together a video showing how to use @nkast’s Aether.Extras to get animated 3D Models into your project.
Setting Up Aether.Extras in MonoGame for 3D Animation

I also made a video showing how I made and animated the model (in Blender), so if your model doesn’t work with it, you can see the process I used and compare it to your own.
Building an Animated 3D Snowman for MonoGame in Blender 2.8

I spent quite a long time trying to figure out how to get 3D animation working in MonoGame and I went down several rabbit holes that never lead me anywhere along the way. Since it took me so long, I thought I would share what finally worked for me, and try to present it in a way that could help even beginners in MonoGame.

Please point out any mistakes I made, or if you notice something I could have done better during the setup process!

Hopefully this helps!

8 Likes
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Great videos!

I followed your videos and everything works out well, except that when in my game I go to the other side of the snowman, I can still see the eyes and nose on the wrong side.

This is from the front:

snowman1
snowman11277×747 129 KB

This is from the back:

snowman2
snowman21277×747 103 KB

Do you know why it’s like this?

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Thanks, glad it helped!

Do you have this line in your code?

GraphicsDevice.DepthStencilState = DepthStencilState.Default;

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Yes, every Update I set it to that, for test purposes, but it still looks the same.

I opened another topic for the issue as well, it contains a little more information there:

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I have recreated the Aether.Extras project to target .Net 6 and thought I’d share here to save others the trouble of migrating it since it is a more involved process than just changing the target framework.

Download updated Aether.Extras project

Notes:

  • Look in the Sample Resources folder to find the Game1.cs used in the above guide, already edited.
  • Sample Resources folder also includes the model and texture files used in the guide
  • Find the .dll files from the ResutingDLLs folder for your project and content pipeline
  • The shader libraries from the original Aether.Extras project are not included, but shouldn’t impact 3D animation capabilities
1 Like
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Thank you very much. With your videos and updated project, I got it working on my custom .NET 4.5 build and my .NET 6 (MG 3.8.1) one, respectively.

One big tip for exporting from Blender: animations run at 24 FPS by default. To change it to 60, go to the white icon for Output Properties in the right rollout, open Dimensions and set the Frame Rate. This made my models update at the correct speed in both Blender and MonoGame.

1 Like
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Thanks for all the work you’ve done!

I am running into an issue where the Model is not showing up in my content pipeline under Model for the fbx file. I built the project successfully and have added references to all of the DLLs in the ResultingDLLs folder into both my project and my content pipeline. I feel like I’m missing something simple, but I’m not sure what that is. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

EDIT: I installed an old version of MGCB as a global tool and it was loading the old version which didn’t work. By right-clicking Content from Solution Explorer and selecting Open With… and selecting the MGCB Editor at the top, the processors shows up.