Amnesia editor - Monster models?

[Racingcreed]

I'm relatively new to this forum, and actually to Amnesia and the editor, so if this has been asked before, or if this is located elsewhere in the forums, I apologize.

Like mentioned above, I've recently started to learn the Amnesia editor; the main reason for this being I'm too scared to play Amnesia alone Anyway, I'm getting along nicely, I've had a few concerns with scripting and such, but with the help of a few members in these forums I'm progressing and learning at a steady pace.

I'm coming near the part of needing to include monsters, now, I've not gotten too far into Amnesia, in fact I'm fairly near the start, only just entering the prison so I'm not sure of how many monsters and content is available in Amnesia, but i'm looking for a few varied models of monsters, perhaps ones that the community has made, perhaps not, I'm not sure; just something other than the original monster used in Amnesia.

If this is possible, could someone please link me to the link of forum/download, as well as provide the original owner of the model (so credit is given) and instructions to downloading/installing if possible.

This isn't a massive concern if it's not possible, I just felt making something different from the norm. would give my story a nice touch.

Thanks for reading,

RC

[The chaser]

If you dive in the development resources thread you will find some custom monsters but, there's people that is making right now monsters.

Hell, everyone wants new monsters. There are:

The original:

-Grunt
-Brute
-Waterlurker

The custom ones:

-The Mongrel
-Flying demon
-Corpse male
-Intelligencer
-Remnant

Concerning of using them:

http://wiki.frictionalgames.com/hpl2/tut...rpathnodes

[xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Also the Suitor - he comes with the free DLC "Justine". Here's the thread with the link.
But of course, he's part of the "official" monster group, so most people know him already.

[Statyk]

Chaser, if I'm not mistaken, I think Damascus would like to keep the Remnant and Intelligencer unique to his own story. I don't think he wants those monsters in others' Custom Stories.

[JonnyAnomaly]

I was wondering if it would be possible to just replace to model itself with a custom one, and keep the skeleton and the animations from the original? I'm working on a low poly enemy at the moment but I get the feeling the animation part will be a problem for me. Being able to just change the appearance of the monster would be a great help in being able to get something new into the game, even if it only looks different!

[xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

I was wondering if it would be possible to just replace to model itself with a custom one, and keep the skeleton and the animations from the original? I'm working on a low poly enemy at the moment but I get the feeling the animation part will be a problem for me. Being able to just change the appearance of the monster would be a great help in being able to get something new into the game, even if it only looks different!

Hm... lemme think. It should be possible, since as far as I know the animation files only store the name of the joint and it's rotation/ translation.
You'd need to do something like this:

- copy the whole grunt folder (or brute or suitor...)
- Import the .dae file of the skinned mesh into Maya
- don't touch the joints but delete the mesh or unbind it if you just want to modify it
- build your own mesh or modify the old one so that it still has its limbs in the right place for the joint skeleton to work.
- re-skin the mesh to the joints (If your new mesh is very close to the old one, you can also not delete the old one and use Maya's copy skin weights - function to make this step easier. Delete the old mesh afterwards then.)
- export as .dae again - make sure you have at least the correct diffuse .dds applied in the maya material or your exported .dae might crash the model editor!
(- save the .ent again to make sure it's really using the new mesh? Not sure if that would be necessary.)

Aah but it's a shame so few people are willing to get into animation. It's such a fun and rewarding field of art!

[JonnyAnomaly]

Thanks Hirnwirbel, I will give that a try. I'll try to learn to animate because I want to be able to do the whole process of modelling objects and characters and get them working in my custom story, I just get the feeling I'll hit a massive hurdle when I get to the animation part, and it would be nice to know that if that fails, I can always use the original files as a base point!

[The chaser]

Chaser, if I'm not mistaken, I think Damascus would like to keep the Remnant and Intelligencer unique to his own story. I don't think he wants those monsters in others' Custom Stories.

Oh, well, then I apologize. I only gave him the list of the monsters that, by what I know, are going to be used.

Oh, how could I forget it: The monsters that KH55 and me are making for "The Otherworld" will be available for other CS's too. Except some.

[crisosphinx]

I was wondering if it would be possible to just replace to model itself with a custom one, and keep the skeleton and the animations from the original? I'm working on a low poly enemy at the moment but I get the feeling the animation part will be a problem for me. Being able to just change the appearance of the monster would be a great help in being able to get something new into the game, even if it only looks different!

Hm... lemme think. It should be possible, since as far as I know the animation files only store the name of the joint and it's rotation/ translation.
You'd need to do something like this:

- copy the whole grunt folder (or brute or suitor...)
- Import the .dae file of the skinned mesh into Maya
- don't touch the joints but delete the mesh or unbind it if you just want to modify it
- build your own mesh or modify the old one so that it still has its limbs in the right place for the joint skeleton to work.
- re-skin the mesh to the joints (If your new mesh is very close to the old one, you can also not delete the old one and use Maya's copy skin weights - function to make this step easier. Delete the old mesh afterwards then.)
- export as .dae again - make sure you have at least the correct diffuse .dds applied in the maya material or your exported .dae might crash the model editor!
(- save the .ent again to make sure it's really using the new mesh? Not sure if that would be necessary.)

Aah but it's a shame so few people are willing to get into animation. It's such a fun and rewarding field of art!

Animation files store the model as well. That's what I figured out and that's how I've been exporting them. Otherwise, you get a blank file.

You can't use a new model on the previous animation files, unfortunately (unless, perhaps, you get it to be the exact same size and then use wordpad and replace the models from before? Haven't tried that yet).



The only way to use the old animations, is to bring them into maya, parent constraint your new skeleton to the old one, bake the animation, delete the previous skeleton, export and hope your paintweights are working.

[xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Animation files store the model as well.

Why on earth...? It makes sense, I mean it's just a normal, renamed .dae after all, but why would hpl even care if there's a mesh in the file? That just seems like an awfully stupid system to have... ah well.

Anyway, if you don't feel like parent constraining everything in every file, (might be a lot of work without recording and saving what you're doing in the script editor) there are several ways to import an animation from an animation file into your new rig file (the one that contains the old skeleton with the new mesh).

1. Maya's built-in .anim export. Might need to be activated in the Plug-in menu first. Always select the joints you want to ex- and import from or it won't work at all. Probably won't work anyway because - well - it's Autodesk we're talking about here.

2. If that doesn't work, try the amazing dkanim-script by Daniel Kramer. It works much better than the built-in export. Should come with instructions.

3. If for some reason, that still doesn't work, you can always go the slightly more complicated route of character sets and anim clips. Create a character set that includes all joints in both files, then export an anim clip from the animation file and import it in the other one via Trax Editor and bake the animation onto the joints again. Works almost guaranteed, but is a bit of a hassle to set up. Try the other two options first and if they don't work, I can give you step-by-step instructions for this method