DISCLAIMER: This will only work on a Blender exported armature. If it was exported by 3dsMax it will be complicated or impossible to get it right. Also if the blend already exists in the art repository you'd better use that instead.
Step 1: Gather all the needed material
In order to make a clean project and make it nice for the people coming after him (so that no one has to do further editing), one should try to keep things organized. You can refer to this guide: Organizing your blender folder We will assume this convention for the rest of this guide. We will use the boar mesh as a demonstration.
First head to your local SVN or GIT copy of the game. See Build Instructions
Go to the following location to find the textures of the mesh you are trying to import:
binaries/data/mods/public/art/textures/skeletal
We are looking for this specific texture
animal_boar.dds
Notice it's a DDS texture. While blender supports it, it should be turned into a PNG, as it will be easier for people afterwards to edit it as it is more widely supported.
Info: You can find more information about the DDS image format here: DirectDraw_Surface
To convert it, either use you favorite graphics package, or do it in blender. Load the texture in the UV editor, and save it as PNG in the export/textures folder.
Important: Skip this step if the texture has any kind of alpha transparency used for clothing in the game. Else you will loose that information. There are a few tricks to keep it as is.
To do: Write a tutorial about this.
Then we need the mesh. You can find it here:
binaries/data/mods/public/art/meshes/skeletal
The file is:
boar.dae
Info: Notice the naming convention is incorrect it should have the "animal_" prefix, or should be put in a folder called animals. It could also be named:
fauna_boar.dae
Then we need all the animations. You can find them there :
binaries/data/mods/public/art/meshes/skeletal
Once you have gathered all of them put them in the import/meshes folder. Step 2 Importing in Blender
Launch Blender
Delete everything in the scene.
Go to file / import/ collada select the base mesh (Do not forget to tick import units else you might run into trouble later)
Optional: Clear any material on the mesh and use the default one.
Depending on your renderer set up the material so that it uses the texture you put in import earlier
Clear anything you do not want in the scene especially the default anims. Unlink them from the armature as well
Import Process:
Import the first animation. For instance the walk collada file in the scene.
Switch to the animation layout.
Switch from dope sheet to action editor
You should have at least two armature action_xxx
The one you want is the one attached to the armature.
Rename it boar_walk_01
Mark the other for deletion by shift clicking on the little X near it.
Apply it to your first armature, and delete this imported one.
Make sure the little F is ticked near the animation name, else it won't be saved.
Save and reload.
Import all the animation as described previously in the import process
This is not over yet.
For some reason each imported bone will have custom properties and those are the ones that screw up when re-exporting the animation. To fix those you must
Open the armature in edit mode and delete all those custom properties.
Tip: In Blender one cannot simply delete materials or textures or animations you have to reload the scene after marking one of those for deletion. Else they will stick around. I think it’s a good practice to remove useless elements from your scene. First that reduces somewhat the blend file size then it makes it easier to find the animations you are looking for and finally were you to append materials from another blend file it will be easier to find especially if you set a good name.
Note: For the armature to work again you'll have to re-export every single animation. Also due to the nature of Blender armatures you'll probably have to update the skeleton file. I’ve made a handy script you can find there:
Also, sometimes the armature becomes too similar to another one and the game gets confused. So, you'll have to rename every bone. That's a rather annoying process especially if you have a lot of animations. This tutorial will guide you:
I attached the final blend file so you can see an example.
boar-10.blend
Since our game has a strange way of recognizing skeletons that can be a very time consuming to process. This is why in some cases we have to prefix our skeletons with the object's name. For instance the armature from a boar should be named "Boar_Armature". This will avoid problems in the future. Same for the bones e.g. "Base" would become "Boar_Base" the only things you wouldn't want to rename would be prop points. You don't have to rename every bone, the root is enough, but it's better to start on a good foot. Step 1 : Bone Renaming We will use the following blend file -> boar-10.blend Let's assume you want to rename the root bone that's also called "BoarArmature" to "Boar_Base" in every animation you have in the blend file you'll get this: Note: The following only applies to every other animations, not the current one. The current one will update just fine. So make sure to update bone names with the animation using the most of them. Also, if you need to remove bones do it now. It will save you time. Blender won't know anymore to what bone you want to rig to what. So they will appear underlined in red. To Fix this you'll have to double click on each of the lines for each of the bones, and replace the occurrences of "BoarArmature" to "Boar_Base" Important: Bone names are case sensitive. You'll have to repeat the renaming for every action in the scene. This can be time consuming You will now be able to reexport your model correctly, add new bones. Step 2 : Skeleton generation Now that you have fixed your mesh in blender you need to get it ready for the game. For that you'll need to update the skeleton file. To do this you still have the tedious option of doing it manually or you can use my script. To use this script you'll need to install python Export the model you want to generate the skeleton for as DAE. Put it in the input folder Then open a command line and run python skeleton_generator.py Voilà ! You now have a XML file ready for the game that you can put in: binaries/data/mods/{yourmod}/art/skeletons/ Don't forget to delete the old skeleton file.
