Has anyone actually made a custom monster work?

[convolution223]

Nah, there isn't any tutorial in the wiki on it.

Basically, you'll need the latest version of OpenCollada for Maya (http://www.opencollada.org/download.html). When exporting your model, it's best to delete any history on it. I think you have to set "normalize weights" to interactive on the bindskin as well. After that, export with OpenCollada; make sure triangulate is checked (assuming you didn't triangulate before).

First open your model in modelview to generate msh and mat files, or create the mat file beforehand in the material editor (which is usually the better option). Don't try to "add animations" in that, it doesn't seem to work and will probably crash the modelview. After that, export the mesh in model editor. Set the entity type to grunt enemy. You don't have to do anything to the mesh at all; no bodies or anything. Once you set him to the grunt, change his variables to whatever you like. After that, go to animations. You'll have to add all of his animations. The one thing to look out for here is that you'll need to name the animations exactly the same as the grunt's animations (not the filename, the name inside the editor). The "steps" that you add I think are used to make sounds when his feet hit the ground, so you try to line up the step intervals with the animation length.

After that's done, save you file and use it in the level editor.

Thank you, I'm going to bookmark this thread for later when I try this out
For my own custom story I just messed with the water lurker's settings in the model editor, so it was different but still a (mostly) invisible monster (it left swarms of flies in its wake). Being able to make an actual, unique monster gets me excited and i'm already thinking of possibilities.