Using egg-optchar

egg-optchar performs basic optimizations of a character model and its associated animations, primarily by analyzing the animation tables and removing unneeded joints and/or morphs. It can also perform basic restructuring operations on the character hierarchy.

Program Arguments

-noabs

Don’t allow any of the named egg files to have absolute pathnames. If any do, abort with an error. This option is designed to help detect errors when populating or building a standalone model tree, which should be self-contained and include only relative pathnames.

-ls

List the joint hierarchy instead of performing any operations.

-lsv

List the joint hierarchy along with an indication of the properties each joint.

-lsp

List the existing joint hierarchy as a series of -p joint,parent commands, suitable for pasting into an egg-optchar command line.

-keep joint[,joint...]

Keep the named joints (or sliders) in the character, even if they do not appear to be needed by the animation.

-drop joint[,joint...]

Removes the named joints or sliders, even if they appear to be needed.

-expose joint[,joint...]

Expose the named joints by flagging them with a DCS attribute, so each one can be found in the scene graph when the character is loaded, and objects can be parented to it. This implies -keep.

-suppress joint[,joint...]

The opposite of suppress, this prevents the named joints from being created with an implicit DCS attribute, even if they contain rigid geometry. The default is to create an implicit node for any joint that contains rigid geometry, to take advantage of display list and/or vertex buffer caching. This does not imply -keep.

-flag node[,node...][=name]

Assign the indicated name to the geometry within the given nodes. This will make the geometry visible as a node in the resulting character model when it is loaded in the scene graph (normally, the node hierarchy is suppressed when loading characters). This is different from -expose in that it reveals geometry rather than joints; the revealed node can be hidden or its attributes changed at runtime, but it will be animated by its vertices, not the node, so objects parented to this node will not inherit its animation.

-defpose anim.egg,frame

Specify the model’s default pose. The pose is taken from the indicated frame of the named animation file (which must also be named separately on the command line). The pose will be held by the model in the absence of any animation, and need not be the same pose in which the model was originally skinned.

-preload

Add an <AnimPreload> entry for each animation to the model file(s). This can be used at runtime to support asynchronous loading and binding of animation channels.

-zero joint[,hprxyzijkabc]

Zeroes out the animation channels for the named joint. If a subset of the component letters hprxyzijkabc is included, the operation is restricted to just those components; otherwise the entire transform is cleared.

-keepall

Keep all joints and sliders in the character, except those named explicitly by -drop.

-p joint,parent

Moves the named joint under the named parent joint. Use -p joint, to reparent a joint to the root. The joint transform is recomputed appropriately under its new parent so that the animation is not affected (the effect is similar to NodePath::wrt_reparent_to).

-new joint,source

Creates a new joint under the named parent joint. The new joint will inherit the same net transform as its parent.

-rename joint,newjoint

Renames the indicated joint, if present, to the given name.

-q quantum

Quantize joint membership values to the given unit. This is the smallest significant change in joint membership. There can be a significant performance (and memory utilization) runtime benefit for eliminating small differences in joint memberships between neighboring vertices. The default is 0.01; specifying 0 means to preserve the original values.

-qa quantum[,hprxyzijkabc]

Quantizes animation channels to the given unit. This rounds each of the named components of all joints to the nearest multiple of unit. There is no performance benefit, and little compression benefit, for doing this; and this may introduce visible artifacts to the animation. However, sometimes it is a useful tool for animation analysis and comparison. This option may be repeated several times to quantize different channels by a different amount.

-dart [default, sync, nosync, or structured]

change the dart value in the given eggs

-fixrest

Specify this to force all the initial rest frames of the various model files to the same value as the first model specified. This is a fairly drastic way to repair models whose initial rest frame values are completely bogus, but should not be performed when the input models are correct.

-pr path_replace

Sometimes references to other files (textures, external references) are stored with a full path that is appropriate for some other system, but does not exist here. This option may be used to specify how those invalid paths map to correct paths. Generally, this is of the form 'orig_prefix=replacement_prefix', which indicates a particular initial sequence of characters that should be replaced with a new sequence; e.g. '/c/home/models=/beta/fish'. If the replacement prefix does not begin with a slash, the file will then be searched for along the search path specified by -pp. You may use standard filename matching characters ('*', '?', etc.) in the original prefix, and '**' as a component by itself stands for any number of components.

This option may be repeated as necessary; each file will be tried against each specified method, in the order in which they appear in the command line, until the file is found. If the file is not found, the last matching prefix is used anyway.

-pp dirname

Adds the indicated directory name to the list of directories to search for filenames referenced by the source file. This is used only for relative paths, or for paths that are made relative by a -pr replacement string that doesn’t begin with a leading slash. The model-path is always implicitly searched anyway.

-ps path_store

Specifies the way an externally referenced file is to be represented in the resulting output file. This assumes the named filename actually exists; see -pr to indicate how to deal with external references that have bad pathnames. This option will not help you to find a missing file, but simply controls how filenames are represented in the output.

The option may be one of: rel, abs, rel_abs, strip, or keep. If either rel or rel_abs is specified, the files are made relative to the directory specified by -pd. The default is rel.

-pd path_directory

Specifies the name of a directory to make paths relative to, if -ps rel or -ps rel_abs is specified. If this is omitted, the directory name is taken from the name of the output file.

-pc target_directory

Copies textures and other dependent files into the indicated directory. If a relative pathname is specified, it is relative to the directory specified with -pd, above.

-no

Strip all normals.

-np

Strip existing normals and redefine polygon normals.

-nv threshold

Strip existing normals and redefine vertex normals. Consider an edge between adjacent polygons to be smooth if the angle between them is less than threshold degrees.

-nn

Preserve normals exactly as they are. This is the default.

-tbn name

Compute tangent and binormal for the named texture coordinate set(s). The name may include wildcard characters such as * and ?. The normal must already exist or have been computed via one of the above options. The tangent and binormal are used to implement bump mapping and related texture-based lighting effects. This option may be repeated as necessary to name multiple texture coordinate sets.

-tbnall

Compute tangent and binormal for all texture coordinate sets. This is equivalent to -tbn "*".

-tbnauto

Compute tangent and binormal for all normal maps.

-TS sx[,sy,sz]

Scale the model uniformly by the given factor (if only one number is given) or in each axis by sx, sy, sz (if three numbers are given).

-TR x,y,z

Rotate the model x degrees about the x axis, then y degrees about the y axis, and then z degrees about the z axis.

-TA angle,x,y,z

Rotate the model angle degrees counterclockwise about the given axis.

-TT x,y,z

Translate the model by the indicated amount.

All transformation options (-TS, -TR, -TA, -TT) are cumulative and are applied in the order they are encountered on the command line.

-o filename

Specify the filename to which the resulting egg file will be written. This is only valid when there is only one input egg file on the command line. If you want to process multiple files simultaneously, you must use either -d or -inplace.

-d dirname

Specify the name of the directory in which to write the resulting egg files. If you are processing only one egg file, this may be omitted in lieu of the -o option. If you are processing multiple egg files, this may be omitted only if you specify -inplace instead.

-inplace

If this option is given, the input egg files will be rewritten in place with the results. This obviates the need to specify -d for an output directory; however, it’s risky because the original input egg files are lost.

-cs coordinate-system

Specify the coordinate system to operate in. This may be one of y-up, z-up, y-up-left, or z-up-left.

-f

Force complete loading: load up the egg file along with all of its external references.

-inf filename

Reads input args from a text file instead of the command line. Useful for really, really large lists of args that break the OS-imposed limits on the length of command lines.