Playing around with player models...

[Rebecca]

Hi there!

I've been playing around with Blender a bit, and came up with this lady. The mesh is not finished yet, at the moment it has less than 1300 triangles. I think I won't need so much more triangles, and I'm quite content with the fact. Here's the concept scetch. There is no real textures and rigging yet.

I've been following this template, and I was able to get her into Nexuiz (after some strange and funny effects like a really huge model or an invisible one...): Screenshots. Somehow she has no weapon, I don't know why.

Now I am wondering how to get bump maps and gloss maps to work. I'll have to find out how I can assign UV-Bumpmaps and Reflection-Maps in Blender, and hope that the exporter will sort it out. Mmh... (Haha, the Pyria model source has written "test" on the shirt in her gloss map. Does that show in the game?)

And how would I create my own animations? I see that the export script has an option for animations, but what would the proper setup in Blender be? What do I select to be exported as an animation?

And about that changing colours of shirt and trousers stuff... How would I get the colours assigned to the right faces? Ah, well, I can worry about this detail when the rest is done. If I ever finish, that is...

[divVerent]

Bump map is called texturename_bump.tga, and white is "high" and black is "low" for the bumps.

Gloss map is called texturename_gloss.tga.

They are assigned by DP and need no special UV coords in Blender - they simply work by adding the extra tga files, and use the same UV space as the base texture.

As for the animations, absolutely no idea, as I don't know modeling apps.

The weapon attachment probably fails because you don't provide a bone called "bip01 r hand", which is what the weapon attaches to. How to do that in Blender, no idea.

Team coloring is done by adding extra tetxures... texturename_shirt.tga and texturename_pants.tga are used for that. Basically, you cut out the part to be colored from the base texture, and paste it in the _shirt.tga or _pants.tga. Again, the same UV coords are used.

[Genegineer]

I'm not sure how Blender does its thing. but from the animation packages I do know, you must make sure the vertices to the mesh are attached to the bones in the skeleton. The skeletons available are listed in the forums (with the original models). You *could* just create your own skeleton for your model. If you make your own skeleton, you would have to create all the animations that go with it. If you attach your model to a pre-made skeleton, then you could copy-paste the other animation .smd files to be used for the other animations. Attaching your model to a default skeleton is MUCH easier, but making your own skeleton and animating it is so much better looking. Study the original models to see how they run and then go from there. Btw, your model looks great!!!!!

[Rebecca]

Thanks divVerent for the explanations of the texture stuff.

The weapon attachment probably fails because you don't provide a bone called "bip01 r hand", which is what the weapon attaches to. How to do that in Blender, no idea.

Ah, yes, I have no such bone, but I know how to add one in Blender.

Genegineer: I would like to try my own animations. I think I could do animations that fit my model better than the existing ones. I'll just need to know how to use the export script in Blender correctly. Well, I have a long weekend ahead of me to figure that one out.

[Dokujisan]

Rebecca

I agree, great start for a model. Have you done any other 3D modeling before?

I got nosey and found a bit of your manga gallery http://www.rbreu.de/galerie/manga/manga.html

Looking forward to your future creations

[Rebecca]

Yes, I have been using Blender for years now, not regularly though.

I have added ears to the mesh and some details on the boots. I am at 1490 triangles now. I started rigging the model, but with low poly and being restricted to weights 0 and 1, it is not very easy to make the model transform smoothly. Especially the knees and the shoulder/armpit area are giving me a hard time. As a workaround to the weight 0/1 restriction, I have added extra bones between upper leg/lower leg and collarbone/upper arm. I'll see how that works out when doing the first real animations.

I was able to get my first little animation into Nexuiz. In Blender, if you select the mesh and the armature (skeleton), the nex_smd_mesh_export.py exports the currently active action. The script has an off-by-one bug when exporting an animation, line 809 should be:

Code: Select all

self.file.write( '%i "%s" %i\n' % ( bone.index, bone.name, bone.parent.index ) )

instead of

Code: Select all

self.file.write( '%i "%s" %i\n' % ( bone.index, bone.name, bone.parent.index + 1 ) )

And zmodel is reporting a wrong bone name on certain errors with the sceleton definition. Line 484 should be

Code: Select all

printf("warning: duplicate global bone definition ...", bone[i].name, bone[i].parent, parent);

instead of

Code: Select all

printf("warning: duplicate global bone definition ...", name, bone[i].parent, parent);

I spent a long time searching for an error with the wrong bone...

Ah, and the model now has a waepon. Adding a bone called "bip01 r hand" did the trick. In the Pyria model, that is just the bone for the hand, but in Blender one should name symmetrical bones something.L and something.R so that Blender recognises them, thus I just added an extra bone for the weapon. Now my model could do funny things with the weapon, juggling for examle...

Next I'll try to do a run animation. Then I'll see if the mesh is ok the way it is now...

[Rebecca]

I decided I'm done with the rigging now. I had to add some more faces at the knees and shoulders, so I am now at about 1640 triangles. Deformation is still not perfect, but I don't want to spent any more time with it right now. Main problem is that the legs are getting a bit longer when bent because of the deformation in the knee area.

I''ve started to do some animations, which is lots of fun, especially since I have found out how to force the bots to use my model. I can't provide you with any screenshots since I've only one computer available at the moment, but I'll do screenies as soon as I am home again.

I've had some problems with the Blender->smd->zym chain which I posted here: http://alientrap.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=37267

[zuriastrad]

especially since I have found out how to force the bots to use my model

how do you do that? that's something i really want to do.

[KadaverJack]

especially since I have found out how to force the bots to use my model

how do you do that? that's something i really want to do.

http://www.alientrap.org/wiki/pmwiki.ph ... tcharacter
set sv_defaultcharacter to 1 and sv_defaultplayermodel to your model. that'll force your model on all players, not just bots, but i guess that's not an issue here... (forcing your model on bots only would require code changes)

[zuriastrad]

fantastic KadaverJack, that does the trick.