2252 replies to this topic

[Heffay]

Had a couple of breakthroughs this morning with regards to rigging. Version 1.4 will make it trivial to rig, although as usual it'll involve a couple of manual steps (far better than trying to parent each object at least).

I'm also working on a way to automate applying the material, but I first have to create a Cryengine .mtl file converter to work with .obj files. Got a lot of the info I need for this, so ... maybe a week? Rigging and materials are the last 2 major hurdles.

Version 2.0 will be for importing animation files, but that's going to have to wait until I can find a way to convert Cryengine .caf files into something Blender can use. I'm also planning on including a way to import other assets, such as buildings. Those are significantly easier to work with so I don't anticipate any major issues.

Edited by Heffay, 03 February 2014 - 06:42 AM.

[Tekadept]

Heffay, on 03 February 2014 - 06:41 AM, said:

but that's going to have to wait until I can find a way to convert Cryengine .caf files into something Blender can use.

Hint on a way to get you started, rather then deal with CAF, i used cryengine sdk to export animations to HTR, which then looks like this, gives you something like this to start working with,

#Fr Tx Ty Tz Rx Ry Rz SF
[Bip01_Pelvis]
1 -0.437383 -1049.956787 7086.821777 0.000000 -89.972027 1.935042 7164.178223
2 19.557789 -1008.279175 7000.033203 0.000000 -89.965736 1.831210 7072.303223
3 71.173088 -996.037720 6850.704590 0.000000 -89.821961 1.685923 6923.099609
4 132.889526 -981.478455 6606.164551 0.000000 -89.742068 1.549056 6679.998047

My way from this data is all sorts of nasty which isnt fun, but I was trialing a new way as from HTR you can get a converter to Acclaim ASF which is importable, by Blender, however you need an AMC first for the skeleton which is problematic but that is what I might start working on if I rekindle the love one day. Was even thinking of writing a HTR to BVH converter, but Math makes my head hurt.

Edited by Tekadept, 03 February 2014 - 05:09 PM.

[Heffay]

Tekadept, on 03 February 2014 - 05:08 PM, said:

Hint on a way to get you started, rather then deal with CAF, i used cryengine sdk to export animations to HTR, which then looks like this, gives you something like this to start working with,

#Fr Tx Ty Tz Rx Ry Rz SF
[Bip01_Pelvis]
1 -0.437383 -1049.956787 7086.821777 0.000000 -89.972027 1.935042 7164.178223
2 19.557789 -1008.279175 7000.033203 0.000000 -89.965736 1.831210 7072.303223
3 71.173088 -996.037720 6850.704590 0.000000 -89.821961 1.685923 6923.099609
4 132.889526 -981.478455 6606.164551 0.000000 -89.742068 1.549056 6679.998047

My way from this data is all sorts of nasty which isnt fun, but I was trialing a new way as from HTR you can get a converter to Acclaim ASF which is importable, by Blender, however you need an AMC first for the skeleton which is problematic but that is what I might start working on if I rekindle the love one day. Was even thinking of writing a HTR to BVH converter, but Math makes my head hurt.

It almost seems like less work to manually create the animations. It almost looks like you only have to do one of each animations, and it applies to each of the armatures. Will take a bit of futzing around, but... eh. There are worse things to do.

I have a request in to the Xentax forum to improve the Cryengine plug-in for Noesis, including .cga and .caf file importing. That's the long game, but probably the most effective one. After all, it hasn't been touched since 2011, and even then it was fairly rudimentary as far as what it supports. Those guys are professionals at figuring out data structures.

[Iqfish]

My Buddy Andreas80 practiced Blender with me, explained me everything and made Noesis work for me.

It took us 2 hours until we realized that I had to change the programs language in Open Office from German to English.

Python only eats decimal numbers in a format like "1.22" and the german/european format is "1,22".

After that, the Orion was a little *****, the lower arms did not have the right position.

But, after a day of work, I can display my first results!




Coming up:

- Textures
- Rigging


Expect great things Ladies and Gentlemen!

Edited by IqfishLP, 09 February 2014 - 12:38 PM.

[baabaa214]

Heffay,

I tried the 1.3 update and is it works GREAT getting it into Blender.
Problem; I tried to export it out to .fbx or dae format and it failing with the error below on the .fbx and .dae file is missing parts. when exporting or failing to show the part.

I exported the catapult to dae and one is missing weapons and other time it is missing two toes.

Do you know why the .fbx is now not working?
I would like to stay with this export.

thank you for HARD work.
Do you know why this error and how to resolve it for the .fbx export?

[Heffay]

I don't know a lot about the exporting (why would you ever want to export OUT of Blender?? ), but it looks like it's not happy with the materials? Check each of the objects in the Blender file, and see if they have more than one material assigned. I have no idea why this should matter, and to be honest it shouldn't. Any object can have multiple materials assigned to it, but maybe this is a limitation of the FBX exporter.

The FBX exporter is brand new, and it's likely there are a few bugs in it. The Collada one is a work-in-progress too, and there are significant limitations.

For the .dae export, do you have different objects on different layers? For example, in my video I say to move all the weapons to layer 2. Are you exporting without both layers selected?

[baabaa214]

Heffray,

Which video is showing how to move the weapons to different layers.
I just I missed that part.

[Heffay]

baabaa214, on 10 February 2014 - 05:02 AM, said:

Heffray,

Which video is showing how to move the weapons to different layers.
I just I missed that part.

2nd video, about 25 minutes in. m key moves to a new layer.

[CrashieJ]

Bumping this thread hard because I'm working with the CryEngine 3 SDK, and I need some help.
Is there any way to open MWO maps in Cryengine 3, and then plop yourself in with Ctrl-G?

What criteria PGI uses to create their maps? (which angles should be used to designate "no walk" areas and areas too steep to climb)

How big are the maps?

---

my questions come from the way the maps in MW:O seem... MOBA-ish (blech, I know) with laden paths what are wide enough to allow combined arms through. Granted it's just a theory, but I would love to get my hands on say "Canyon Network" and maybe run a few laps on foot and in an Abrams... just to get bearings.
---

Edit: Also maybe with a bit of practice I'll be able to animate some sort of fan made mech teaser video you see every time they drop a hero mech.

Making an Atlas II or the popular Marauder (I think by Kitsune) and seeing it rip through other mechs in 1080HD could be quite interesting.

Edited by gavilatius, 10 February 2014 - 07:31 PM.

[Heffay]

No way to open the map at this time, although in my RSI forum version of this, some have managed to open levels in the sandbox. Dig through here:

https://forums.rober...ng-rsi-s-assets

[Iacov]

hey:)

i tried using mech importer 1.3, but as soon as i enter .\mech-importer.ps1 atlas.cdf
i get an error about something in E:blender_projects could not be found

Edited by Iacov, 11 February 2014 - 06:29 AM.

[Heffay]

Iacov, on 11 February 2014 - 06:26 AM, said:

hey:)

i tried using mech importer 1.3, but as soon as i enter .\mech-importer.ps1 atlas.cdf
i get an error about something in E:blender_projects could not be found

You have to edit the .ps1 file (Notepad will work) and replace the $basedir variable at the top with the base directory for the files you want to modify. Sorry, that was an undocumented change from v1.2.

[Iacov]

ah, thank you

basedir would be game\objects\objects\mechs
or game\objects\objects\mechs\atlas in this case?

[Heffay]

Iacov, on 11 February 2014 - 08:08 AM, said:

ah, thank you

basedir would be game\objects\objects\mechs
or game\objects\objects\mechs\atlas in this case?

It would be where the objects and textures directory resides. Under the Game subdirectory. i.e. where all the .pak files originally resided (but you copied them over, right? ).

Mech Importer v1.31 (a few bug fixes)

Edited by Heffay, 11 February 2014 - 08:18 AM.

[Heffay]

Mech Importer v1.32 (Test)

Now it will build all the materials, INCLUDING the node layouts! All you have to do is assign each of the materials to the appropriate parts.

For objects that have multiple node groups (Cockpits, head pieces [head and windows]), it doesn't yet assign each material to the respective vertex groups. That should come as part of 1.4 (which will include rigging, which when done manually works pretty slick right now).

[Iqfish]

Wow. Heffay you are my hero. A Heffay Hero mech would be nice.
Anyways. Thank you so much for your work, you are making things way easier!

[Iqfish]

Well, there is a few things I don't quite get with the mech importer tool.
I imported the files myself before and converted them to obj.

- Where do I have to put the ps1-script file?
- What do I have to do, except from changing the path?
- How does the tool know which mech I want to import?

[Iacov]

the easiest way to do it is by copying the mech-importer.ps1 into the mech's folder
e.g (and further used as example) game\objects\objects\mechs\catapult

in powershell, navigate into that directory (cd ...path\catapult)
then, type (without anführungszeichen) ".\mech-importer.ps1 catapult.cdf"
.\ is to tell powershell to use this file from the directory you are currently in (or at least that's the way i understand it)
and the .cdf file tells the script which mech to use...in every mech's folder there is a specific .cdf file (atlas.cdf, cataphract.cdf and so on)

step by step in short (and using a random possible path):
- run powershell as administrator, then...
- "cd d:\game\objects\objects\mechs\catapult"
- ".\mech.importer.ps1 catapult.cdf"
- enter directory of body folder (usually in the "catapult" folder), e.g. "d:\game\objects\objects\mechs\catapult\body"
- then you should get your import.txt in the directory that the mech-importer.ps1 is located

[Heffay]

I modified my path statement so that the script could be run from anywhere. The easiest way I found was to navigate to the directory with the .cdf file (objects\mechs\<mech name>) and run:

Mech-importer.ps1 <mech.cdf>

That way it'll write the import.txt file in that same directory.

Be sure to set the preferred image file type as well. I'm using .jpgs now since the Noesis converter seems to not handle alpha channel properly when converting from .dds files.

Let me know if you have more questions!

[Iqfish]

Umm, it tells me I can't run scripts on my system..?

Yes I ran PS as admin

Edited by IqfishLP, 12 February 2014 - 07:51 AM.