Nexuiz models rigging

[torus]

Can someone please explain to me how rigging a model for Nexuiz works? Am I right that if I make a model in blender with an armature that has matching bone names, the standard animations should work with it?

If so, my question is, what are the naming conventions for the rigging? I have looked everywhere- this information is so incredibly elusive.

Thanks!

[ihsan]

The bones have to be just right and, from what i've noticed in the SMD sources, all points must be weighted to 1 bone only (this is a special case in the file format). After that you run zmodel on it and you're done.

I never finished modifying my Nexuiz weapon exporter scripts to make models. Sounds like I should.

[torus]

Just right in what way? And do you know how to name the bones correctly?

Thanks for the reply

[Shoe]

With md3 playermodel support in newer builds in DP, are all of the old restrictions from .zym still in place?

[divVerent]

Which restrictions?

md3 actually can do much less than zym... it isn't even skeletal. As skeletal formats, psk and dpm are to be preferred.

In the future (not now), adding support for playing multiple animations at once (that is, merging them) is planned for dpm. This will give up/down aim support, basically.

However, only single-part md3 models are supported (not Q3A ones that consist of multiple .md3 files). Multipart models would eat up bandwidth like hell when they are actually treated as three separate entities.

[torus]

3 part models would be nice, although we aren't going to have nice 1 part models unless the documentation is clearer. After I figure this out, I intend to write out some better guids on how to do such things.

Does anyone have any information about how to name a model's armature correctly? That seems to be the only thing standing in the way right now.

[divVerent]

3 part models are simply impossible... if bandwidth is at the limit (and it already is on some maps, like eggandbacon, torus and other maps where you see everyone else), things like the body not moving right and just getting shifted by the legs would happen.

However, especially 1 part md3 is really easy to do. The animations are described in a very simple animinfo file: http://svn.icculus.org/nexuiz/trunk/dat ... iew=markup

Just specify start frame, length and frames per second for each animation, that's it. But don't make the duckjump and jump animations too long

leileilol already made two 1-part md3 models, by the way.

[leileilol]

md3 actually can do much less than zym... it isn't even skeletal. As skeletal formats, psk and dpm are to be preferred.

- md3 allows animator to use vertex weighting; zym does not
- md3 allows normals to be kept; zym does not
- md3 allows tags to be placed wherever they damn want to; zym, psk and dpm does not
- psk and dpm can't be exported from Free Software

[divVerent]

dpm can, using a path via md5, as LH said.

But yes, the lack of tags in zym (and using bones instead) has IMHO been a very bad idea - see the problems with the MG model.

[ihsan]

Well I have a Christmas gift for you all: A fully Nexuiz compatible SMD importer.
It imports all the nexuiz humanoid SMD meshes into blender with skeleton.
There is an animation importer also but It doesn't seem to work just right.

Patched SMD importer:
http://xoopstuner.com/nex/import_static_smd.py

SMD animation importer:
http://xoopstuner.com/nex/import_smd_animation.py[/b]