der_ton@Posted: Thu Sep 07, 2006 8:11 pm Post subject: : Do the blender-exported md5mesh and 3dsmax-exported md5mesh have the same skeleton? I guess not (this would still not be an issue with one of the exporters, because they do not change your imported skeleton, unless you do that in the 3d app or with the "reorient bones" option in the 3dsmax importer). So they might need different AFs, too. That's what I meant with my previous post.
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fuag@Posted: Mon Aug 21, 2006 11:42 am Post subject: Need help rigging: Ok... this is driving me insane.. spend many hours on it.. gotten almost no where. Trying to rig the marine test model i've been bitchin about here for the past week or so. I've gotten it to the point where editAFs doesnt crash anymore at least.. but I cant tell whats going on with the bones anymore. It appears that doom3 draws teh bone names at the base of the bone seeing as when i export my model where the start of origin is at 0,0,0 it draws origin where the start of the bone is, however after trying this and the model showing up wrong i realized that it is drawing the apendeges names and exis bones at the start of the apendeges as well, which wouldnt make sense because it means that the armature would all branch towards origin instead of branchin out from origin, so now I'm not sure at all, and either way i try to set up origin it comes out all twisted when spawned with edit afs, I've been up till 5am with everyone else on my team trying to get it rigged and were certainly further than the begining of the night... but still missing something big. None of us can import md5meshes wich skeletons or use dertons md5mesh/md5anim viewer.

anyway.. in short, please tell me whats wrong with the bone rigging on this model i have the .blend file, .md5mesh and .md5anim and .af although its just a default .af file (one body that contains origin at 0,0,0) at the site

http://fuag.is-a-geek.com/filez/Marine/

Confused

edit: if anyone else is using blender the action i'm exporting is Tpose

obihb@Posted: Mon Aug 21, 2006 1:27 pm Post subject: : I don't have Blender but after importing the MD5Mesh into Max, the bones hierarchy seems very "fragmented". Nothing seems to follow a simple "chain".

You should have something like...

origin to waist
waist to ltheigh
ltheigh to lupperleg
lupperleg to llowerleg
llowerleg to lfoot

etc....

This forms a simple chain of bones with a start and end. Of course the waist split into 3 for left and right legs and spine. So, you need to split the bones in parts, like waist and again the chest to break into left and right arms and neck, etc..

If I look at the bones from your MD5Mesh, there are various splits all over the place in non conventional places. So just check that in your orignial Blender setup. I'm pretty sure it's the reason for your problems and you won't be able to setup a proper AF in this case.
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fuag@Posted: Mon Aug 21, 2006 11:48 pm Post subject: : hmm, i cleaned it up a bit and for a while i had origin working.. the way doom draws teh bones was and probable still is screwing me up.. I finally found it out though.. it draws the name of the bone at the base of the bone and then a line from the base of the bone to the base of the child bone, origin is not hard linked to the body but is the parent of the first spine bone.. or at least thats how I had it.

We got into the academy of art in SF to use der_tons 3ds md5mesh importer but the skeleton we tried to import was all fscked.

Right now the models front is facing the positive x direction, origin is laying starting at 0,0,0 and endign behind the model on the x axis. The feet are both touching the x axis.

Everything is vertex grouped. The problem im getting is that for some reason it still wants to jam the pelvis into the ground and besides that, my base arm bones and base leg bones, and probably the origin although its hard tot ell, seem to get rotated 180degrees when put into the engine.

EDIT: it has nothing to do with wether or not thier hard linked because i just unlinked all of them and exported to the same result.

I will put some screens of the bone structure in the foldier, would really really help if someone who has already rigged a character or has access to a cleanly imported bone structure from id posts a screen of it with names...

EDIT 2: ok.. it appears to be an exporting problem for some reason Rclavical, Lclavical, Rankle, Lankle get pulled as far forward as the can go and rotated 180 degrees along thier axis when exported if the model in blender is facing forward according to blender (etc face towards teh positive y axis)

EDIT 3: friend reports model works perfectly in der_tons model viewer

kat@Posted: Tue Aug 22, 2006 5:58 am Post subject: :

fuag wrote:

hmm, i cleaned it up a bit and for a while i had origin working.. the way doom draws teh bones was and probable still is screwing me up.. I finally found it out though.. it draws the name of the bone at the base of the bone and then a line from the base of the bone to the base of the child bone, origin is not hard linked to the body but is the parent of the first spine bone.. or at least thats how I had it.

For blender keep in mind that the large ball end of a bone is the origin point, so yes, the 'origin' bone will be sitting on the ground when you look at it in der_tons veiwer.

Quote:

We got into the academy of art in SF to use der_tons 3ds md5mesh importer but the skeleton we tried to import was all fscked.

If you have problems always back track blender versions and double check output, the MD5 scripts seem to work OK with 2.42 but I've not directly tested them myself yet. They do work with 2.41.

Quote:

Right now the models front is facing the positive x direction, origin is laying starting at 0,0,0 and endign behind the model on the x axis. The feet are both touching the x axis.

Ignore this... what you need to do with Blender characters for D3 games is have the mesh facing front in Blenders 'side' view (NumPad 3). If you don't do this the orientation gets messed up.

Quote:

Everything is vertex grouped. The problem im getting is that for some reason it still wants to jam the pelvis into the ground and besides that, my base arm bones and base leg bones, and probably the origin although its hard tot ell, seem to get rotated 180degrees when put into the engine.

obihb uses Max but what he said is spot on, you need to make sure that the bones follow a proper hierachy becasue that's where the game gets some of their positional data from (iirc), get that relationship worng and they can go all over the place because nothing is linking them together
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fuag@Posted: Wed Aug 23, 2006 5:35 am Post subject: : ok.. so... after 4 days I have tried every boning configuration I have found possible... The latest one I know should work because everything is connected, no wierd children that dont come from teh tips of thier parents no break in the chain, everything hard connected to its parent everything vertext grouped, keyed by LocRot in an action called Tpose exported from that action. Facing the "3" view in blender, exported with the latest der_ton script. It is still fkd up when i try to spawn it with editAFs. the legs are rotated, arms rotated, feet rotated.

I followed a video of someone using der tons script exporting and riging a model and putting it into doom3 with this exact bone structure. I've tried exporting with 2.42a, 2.42, and 2.41, I cant find any older releases for linux still on any file servers.

here is a picture of the bone structure i used and the guy in the tutorial used. the very end bones are handles and are not linked to any vertex groups

the latest .blend is still on the site along with the latest md5mesh and md5anim.

kat@Posted: Wed Aug 23, 2006 6:27 am Post subject: : I don't wish to be rude [yes you do - Ed] Whose tutorial did you use? They should be shot for showing you that.. seriously.

The origin bone needs to connect to whatever bone is at the crotch area, look at the way the default models are rigged, as obihb said you need to parent the 'body' bone to the 'origin'

Code:

origin < body < hipL < upperlegL < lowerlegL
< hipR < upperlegR < lowerlegR

That's why your mesh is getting all screwed up.

You're going to need to delete all the IPO data and reset the skeleton and model before you export because it sounds like Blender is now getting in a twist when it exports the mesh - it doesn't always read/convert the data correctly which causes the mesh to collapse amongst other things.
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fuag@Posted: Wed Aug 23, 2006 7:13 am Post subject: : I apologize for any rudeness, really didn't mean to. its closer now, but how do I clear the ipo curves and reset the model/bones. I tried center new/ctrl+A and ctrl+N, deleted the chanels and ipo curves in the actions but not sure how to get it to delete the actions themselves

kat@Posted: Wed Aug 23, 2006 8:07 am Post subject: : Go into the action editor and make sure you select all and then delete.

Once you've done that version save the file and then File > Open recent. Open the OOPS window and check your links. You basically have to go back into the IPO/Action editor, delete, save and then reopen last to get Blender tp clear old data from the file.
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fuag@Posted: Wed Aug 23, 2006 8:55 am Post subject: : hmm.. everythings mostly fixed about it, but for some reason, nomatter what i do.. I found out it wasnt the mesh crumpeling.

Wherever there is a T in the structure where bones split off in opposite directions, when I go to export they get rotated 180 degrees.

its not crimping at the shoulder but the right arm is rated to the left side and the left arm rotated to ther ight side, same with the legs... I'ma try messing with a couple more things, I'll post a screen before i go to bed tho if its still bien wierd.

hmm, i tried a few things and they still rotate when i export, dunno but could it be something with the prefixes I use? When I name the bones the R bones are on teh right of the model not on the right of the viewport, but then when i look at it in game it make all the bones with R prefix on the right according to the viewer. no clue if that has anythign to do with it though.

Thanks for the help so far. Heres a image of model in blender and doom with names

Blender

Doom 3

kat@Posted: Wed Aug 23, 2006 4:24 pm Post subject: : That looks like it's a vertex weighting problem. Check your groups.
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fuag@Posted: Wed Aug 23, 2006 8:12 pm Post subject: : Sorry, lost on what to check for with the vert groups haven't really ever done any modeling for use outside of blender before this.

I did the vertex groups kinda sloppily but dunno how it would mess it up in game. Used envelopes fixed the size so it includes all the verts, removed the armature modifier from the mesh, parented the armature to the mesh and selected vert groups from closest bones, then cleared all parents and reapplied the armature modifier to the mesh.

fuag@Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2006 7:34 pm Post subject: : ima go through an manually paint the vertex groups, but really starting to think its a problem with the exporter, would help a lot if someone who has already used it tried downloading marine.blend off the link at the top of this file and exporting "Tpose"

Although I cant find a way to transfer the mesh wiht bones from blender to 3ds we transfered the mesh today and rigged it in 3ds then exported and everything was fine in game. So we went back and tried some of the previous bone configurations I had and they exported cleanly as well. even the wierd one with origin linked to the bottom of the right foot. We used the envelop bone feature for teh vertex painting on these exports as well.

der_ton@Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 3:18 pm Post subject: : So what is the status of the problem right now?
I downloaded the blend file, exported and the result looked ok in my viewer.
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fuag@Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 6:12 pm Post subject: : schw33t! thnx for the reply.

Its still there, last night I thought the problem might be in me using linux x86_64 so I transfered the .blend to a win32 laptop and tried exporting but it was still disconfigured in game. It shows up fine in the model viewer and when a model def is made and a testModel is run, but when you actually go to load it into editAFs for rigging It shows up disconfigured with right bones on the left and left ones on the right. I'll put the .af file in there as well, in edit af's it shows up as test_char_boone.

fuag@Posted: Sun Aug 27, 2006 10:06 pm Post subject: : can anyone confirm this so I know its not a problem with my setup in someway Confused

moved on to dealing with gui's and scripting for now but will eventually have to find out whats goin on or buy 3ds

fuag@Posted: Thu Aug 31, 2006 9:34 am Post subject: : please, someone give some feedback. feels like its been forever and I'm still getting a non-existant error when exporting the mesh. The files are up there, can anone else tell me if it works for them. When you go in to rig it.

der_ton@Posted: Thu Aug 31, 2006 6:29 pm Post subject: :

fuag wrote:

I'm still getting a non-existant error when exporting the mesh.

der_ton wrote:

I downloaded the blend file, exported and the result looked ok in my viewer.

I think there's some miscommunication going on here. Your inconclusive problem description might be holding back people to help you because they don't really know what's going on.

If you are actually talking about AF editor problems, there's a big thread somewhere here that might help you:
http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=16202
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fuag@Posted: Thu Aug 31, 2006 9:54 pm Post subject: : Cool, thnx for the reply. Smile

Heres a summery of what the problem seems to be now. Its changed from teh begining of the thread because I'm finding out a little more by tweaking the bone structure and reexporting different ways to find out whats going wrong.

Well, the problem doesnt show up untill you go to make an AF for the model but the problem has to lie somewhere in exporting not the AF editor because when we go to rig meshes we exported from 3ds they show up fine in editAFs. Its something specific to meshes exported from blender when loaded with editAFs, we've tested it on 4 different boxes now by 3 different people for some reason bones around T branches get rotated 180 degrees when bieng loaded. Although this is kinda useless info I've also noticed that if the model is facing front as blender would normally view front unpon export, instead of the bones bieng rotated 180 degrees the joints are pulled straight forward on loading the model in editAFs.

At first it looked like the mesh was crimped but after a while of staring at it I noticed everything I had named with the prfix L was on the right side and everything with the prefix R was on the left side, it also was clear that thats why the crimps were there as well, the vertex groups are getting pulled through eachother because the joints have switched places.

We've successfully rigged the one that was exported from 3ds although we havent gotten it to spawn yet because of aas errors so the problem is definitely something with exporting from blender.

The model appears perfect when viewed through the model viewer or when loaded via the testModel command however.

Confused

EDIT: the reason we don't just use 3ds is because no one on the team actualy owns it and we dont want to risk making a mod with software we don't own.

der_ton@Posted: Fri Sep 01, 2006 12:39 pm Post subject: : I don't know anything about AF editing.

My guess is that the bones in the af editor get rotated. Did you create the af for a different skeleton, and are now applying it to this one? You might have to do this step again.
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fuag@Posted: Sat Sep 02, 2006 4:26 am Post subject: : Still think its something in the mesh itself in export because the same model and bone structure exported from 3ds displays fine in edit afs when trying to make a new def for it but when exported from blender it appears crisscrossed.

If anyone knows a file type that saves bones and uvmapping I could import the exact model into 3ds export them both and try to find out through a .diff.

I'm heading up to tahoe for labourday but when I get back I'll get the other .af sent to me and try applying it to the same model exported with blender and see if it works.

peace,
Michael

edit: if anyone else is using blender the action i'm exporting is Tpose

kat@Posted: Tue Aug 22, 2006 5:58 am Post subject: :

fuag wrote:

For blender keep in mind that the large ball end of a bone is the origin point, so yes, the 'origin' bone will be sitting on the ground when you look at it in der_tons veiwer.

Quote:

We got into the academy of art in SF to use der_tons 3ds md5mesh importer but the skeleton we tried to import was all fscked.

If you have problems always back track blender versions and double check output, the MD5 scripts seem to work OK with 2.42 but I've not directly tested them myself yet. They do work with 2.41.

Quote:

Right now the models front is facing the positive x direction, origin is laying starting at 0,0,0 and endign behind the model on the x axis. The feet are both touching the x axis.

Ignore this... what you need to do with Blender characters for D3 games is have the mesh facing front in Blenders 'side' view (NumPad 3). If you don't do this the orientation gets messed up.

Quote:

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the latest .blend is still on the site along with the latest md5mesh and md5anim.

Code:

origin < body < hipL < upperlegL < lowerlegL
< hipR < upperlegR < lowerlegR

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kat@Posted: Wed Aug 23, 2006 4:24 pm Post subject: : That looks like it's a vertex weighting problem. Check your groups.
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der_ton@Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 3:18 pm Post subject: : So what is the status of the problem right now?
I downloaded the blend file, exported and the result looked ok in my viewer.
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fuag@Posted: Sun Aug 27, 2006 10:06 pm Post subject: : can anyone confirm this so I know its not a problem with my setup in someway Confused

moved on to dealing with gui's and scripting for now but will eventually have to find out whats goin on or buy 3ds

der_ton@Posted: Thu Aug 31, 2006 6:29 pm Post subject: :

fuag wrote:

I'm still getting a non-existant error when exporting the mesh.

der_ton wrote:

I downloaded the blend file, exported and the result looked ok in my viewer.

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fuag@Posted: Thu Aug 31, 2006 9:54 pm Post subject: : Cool, thnx for the reply. Smile

EDIT: the reason we don't just use 3ds is because no one on the team actualy owns it and we dont want to risk making a mod with software we don't own.

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