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Need Help [Blender and Unreal 227]

For questions and discussion about UnrealEd, UnrealScript, and other aspects of Unreal Engine design.

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Krull0r
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Subject: Need Help [Blender and Unreal 227]

Post Posted: 14 Jun 2015, 22:21

Hi there :)

I started with Blender to create some models for Unreal Engine based games.

I modelled a gun, texture and projectiles are already done but now I'm stuck...
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I learned the basics how to animate a mesh... but ... I don't know the settings for animations to export the model correctly and... importing it to Unreal 1.

I googled and youtubed the whole day without any results.
I tried 3ds2unr but it does not work :(

User avatar ebd
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Subject: Re: Need Help [Blender and Unreal 227]

Post Posted: 15 Jun 2015, 00:47

Unreal 1 handled animations in a really strange way. I don't remember the exact specifics but you need to have each frame be a separate object in your 3d model (named sequentially). If set up that way 3ds2unr is supposed to recognize and import the frames but it is really fussy.

User avatar Jet v4.3.5
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Subject: Re: Need Help [Blender and Unreal 227]

Post Posted: 15 Jun 2015, 06:21

I would LOVE a reliable and closed workflow and set of rules for pushing animated and textured Blender models into Unreal/UT. It does look like you're using the .obj importer built into 227 to convert your weapon into a static mesh instead of a vertex animated mesh ala the original models in Unreal. That's a clear-cut and easy workflow, but the static meshes never inherit animation data from the model that's imported.

It would be invaluable to have a 227 vertex animated mesh importer, but that would be a miracle and a half.

You would have better luck with a skeletal mesh I suppose, if you can get it to work. And it doesn't produce a .uc after export to guide the import process, so the .psk and .psa files will not import by themselves and makes putting your own together a requirement. You may need to look up a way to do that, but I believe the resources are out there. You will need to get that working and test until you get it right (a pain in the ass in its own right), but after that if it works alright in the game then you're golden.

The other mesh format, vertex animation, is older and in UE1 has a pipeline that's jankier than anything I've ever had to deal with when using the engine. I seem to recall that 3ds2unr is a Legend Entertainment-made tool that was never open-sourced or patched beyond a couple of versions, and that is the go-to tool for converting models to the vertex animated format. ebd is right in his description of the system: you have each frame of animation saved as individual model files that are used for vertex location data that the models will tween between to produce animation.

If it's not already obvious, the whole vertex animation thing is a dire situation if you want to go that route, but maybe you can get it to work. It also ensures complete compatibility with all versions of Unreal, so that's a big plus.
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Krull0r
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Subject: Re: Need Help [Blender and Unreal 227]

Post Posted: 15 Jun 2015, 20:07

Okay I figured out how to setup the model to get it correctly exported from blender and how to set the model import-ready with the 3ds2unr tool.

Now comes the next strange thing :D I can't see any textures on this imported mesh.
UCC imports my skin okay... but my mesh only shows the base colour of the skin ... yellow/orange

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Ich werd noch wahnsinnig :/

User avatar AlCapowned
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Subject: Re: Need Help [Blender and Unreal 227]

Post Posted: 16 Jun 2015, 01:29

I'm not sure if this is applicable to Blender, but in my experience with 3ds Max that happens when the UV maps are outside of where they should be. 227's model export feature always does this to me.

Use UnrealNST here: http://www.mediafire.com/download/0031tlh9bb5sqy5/UNSTv1b.zip

With it, you can see where your UV maps are. Start it, open your model, go to Options -> Mapping Mode, and if you don't see anything (or if the UV maps are outside the checkered box) then that probably means that your model's UV maps are in the wrong position. Make sure you look at different materials by going to Textures in the upper right corner and choosing different slots. If you want to look at your model with a skin, select your texture slot, then go to Skins -> Open and choose a texture.

It's not good for editing UV maps outside of making minor changes, though, so it would be best to fix the problem through Blender if possible. If it's not a Blender problem, then I'm guessing it's a 3ds2unr problem. You can use u3d as an alternative to 3ds2unr just to see if that fixes it:

U3D: http://www.mediafire.com/download/759636lcpw5dixi/u3d.zip

With U3D, all you have to do is select your input 3ds files, select the 3ds2unr option, and leave the vertex conversion at uniform scale. If you need to use multiple files you'll have to use the append frames to output option and go in the same order that you used for 3ds2unr.

Krull0r
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Subject: Re: Need Help [Blender and Unreal 227]

Post Posted: 17 Jun 2015, 00:06


User avatar Jet v4.3.5
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Subject: Re: Need Help [Blender and Unreal 227]

Post Posted: 17 Jun 2015, 02:48

Krull0r wrote:Solved everything :)

the discussion on Oldunreal.com


Could you by chance reveal the steps you took to export, convert, and import the mesh and animations?
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Krull0r
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Subject: Re: Need Help [Blender and Unreal 227]

Post Posted: 17 Jun 2015, 12:31

Yes! ;)

Preparing the mesh in Blender!

Make sure that your material on this model is named "Skin" otherwise 3ds2unr will shoot warnings.

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Add a Armature to your model and bind it to Vertex Groups

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To create one animation (for example Fire). Make many copies from the mesh in blender and name every single object Fire01, Fire02, Fire03, Fire04..... these are the keyframes.

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Export your mesh with all these multiple objects to Fire.3ds



Converting your Mesh

Convert your mesh and animations with 3ds2unr.

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Open in the Windows Startmenu "cmd" go with DOS commands to the location where 3ds2unr and your .3ds files are.

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Note 1: Blender exports a to large UVmap with the size of 1024px*1024px
and 3ds2unr can only handle UVmaps with the size 256px*256px

To fix this get Wings3d. import your "Still.3ds" (the Still animation has usually only one frame)

Note 2: Wings3d will crash your animation sets so make sure that you save your _a.3d file you converted before you convert it with 3ds2unr again!!

Select the mesh, open the UV Editor Window, Create New Texture and set the texturesize to 256*256 and export the mesh again as .3ds.

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After the conversation you only need the new _d.3d file, which includes the Polygon and the UVMap data.
A good idea is saving this new _d.3d file separate so you have to do this procedure with wings3d only one time.



Importing it to Unreal

Create a new folder in Unreal name it the way you want, this will be your new .u file name later.
Create two subfolders there with the names "Classes" and "Models".

Copy in "Classes" the generated .uc file and in "Models" your _a.3d and _d.3d

Then you have to add the name of your folder as a EditPackage in the Unreal.ini.

If you have a skin for your model just put it folder where your _a.3d and _d.3d are.
It must be a .pcx with indexed colours and have a size of 256px*256px.

Start again "cmd" go to the Unreal/System folder with DOS commands and type the command "ucc make"

DONE


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