Custom monster issue!

[Kirbypwnage]

I did a few very quick(very very quick) experiements with blender to maya import/export and I think that the Autodesk FBX format might be better then collada.
You see the FBX export included a rig(that has some large bones attached to it) the animation and the mesh. the animation was running really fast though intact and I had to assign the texture manually.
The collada on the other hand included a rig just like the other, a mesh of course and the texture was loaded properly(though this might just have something to do with the collada and texture being in the same folder) but the animation was just not there.

so I recommend FBX

the collada and fbx both included a re export from blender of the servant grunt.

Okay... So I imported it into Maya, and got a plugin working, so I could export into .dae files. But then this happened.
(Look at the pic down there)
Very pretty result... Anyone know a solution for that?

http://www.frictionalgames.com/forum/thread-18352.html just because you got it in maya does not mean the strugling is over my friend.

Thats what I was expecting, yeah...

Oh and I almost forgot, a great big THANK YOU for posting a link to that thread, I think I can actually figure out a lot with it!

[xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Here's some stuff you can try in Maya prior to exporting the .dae to figure out where the problem lies:

1. Delete the history - often a surprisingly easy fix for all sorts of things: Select your mesh, then go to Edit> delete by Type> non-deformer history. note that "delete non-deformer history" will leave your skinning intact while "delete history" will also delete your skinning!

2. Re-do the skinning. I think I heard somewhere that hpl has problems if there are too many joints influencing one vertex and your exploded mesh looks a lot like a skinning problem. Use delete history to clean the old skinning, then select your mesh and the highest joint in your hierarchy go to Skin> Smooth bind (select the "Animation" menu from the dropdown first or you may not find it). Make sure you click the little square, not the word, this will bring up options. Bind to joint hierarchy, skinning method is classic linear, set normalize weights to interactive and most importantly, set max infulences to 2. (3 works too I think...but try 2 just to be safe.)

Of course if it turns out this really was the cause of the problem, you'll have to redo your weight painting. So try if the export works before you start painting the weights! ^^

3. Make a mesh cleanup. This will show you errors in your mesh like non-manifold geometry, n-gons... all those "rat's nests" that might be hiding in there, causing problems. Select your mesh, then go to mesh> Cleanup. Make sure you have "select matching polygons" selected, not "cleanup matching polygons", otherwise Maya will try to do stuff on it's own with unpredictable results! Then tick the boxes for everything you want Maya to search for and click apply.

Hm... if I get more ideas I'll write again. Good luck!

[Kirbypwnage]

Here's some stuff you can try in Maya prior to exporting the .dae to figure out where the problem lies:

1. Delete the history - often a surprisingly easy fix for all sorts of things: Select your mesh, then go to Edit> delete by Type> non-deformer history. note that "delete non-deformer history" will leave your skinning intact while "delete history" will also delete your skinning!

2. Re-do the skinning. I think I heard somewhere that hpl has problems if there are too many joints influencing one vertex and your exploded mesh looks a lot like a skinning problem. Use delete history to clean the old skinning, then select your mesh and the highest joint in your hierarchy go to Skin> Smooth bind (select the "Animation" menu from the dropdown first or you may not find it). Make sure you click the little square, not the word, this will bring up options. Bind to joint hierarchy, skinning method is classic linear, set normalize weights to interactive and most importantly, set max infulences to 2. (3 works too I think...but try 2 just to be safe.)

Of course if it turns out this really was the cause of the problem, you'll have to redo your weight painting. So try if the export works before you start painting the weights! ^^

3. Make a mesh cleanup. This will show you errors in your mesh like non-manifold geometry, n-gons... all those "rat's nests" that might be hiding in there, causing problems. Select your mesh, then go to mesh> Cleanup. Make sure you have "select matching polygons" selected, not "cleanup matching polygons", otherwise Maya will try to do stuff on it's own with unpredictable results! Then tick the boxes for everything you want Maya to search for and click apply.

Hm... if I get more ideas I'll write again. Good luck!

I did actually do some fixing on the weight painting, and it does look a bit less exploded now. Hopefully I can get it to work. Thanks for helping!

[xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

If that helped, try "normalize weights", too. (Skin > Edit Smooth Skin > Normalize weights)It changes your skin weights so that the sum of all weights is 1 for every vertex. In 3D programs like Maya (and maybe Blender too?), it is sometimes possible to have more than 100% of combined joint influence on a single vertex, but game engines don't take too kindly to that sort of thing. Give it a try, sometimes while weightpainting you don't even notice the weights are actually not properly normalized!

(That's also what that normalize weights: Interactive option is for - It constantly normalizes the weights while you're weightpainting so that if you paint influence for one joint, the influence of other joints decreases for those vertices. Normalize weights: Post on the other hand doesn't do that right away so you can end up with weird values.)

[Kirbypwnage]

If that helped, try "normalize weights", too. (Skin > Edit Smooth Skin > Normalize weights)It changes your skin weights so that the sum of all weights is 1 for every vertex. In 3D programs like Maya (and maybe Blender too?), it is sometimes possible to have more than 100% of combined joint influence on a single vertex, but game engines don't take too kindly to that sort of thing. Give it a try, sometimes while weightpainting you don't even notice the weights are actually not properly normalized!

(That's also what that normalize weights: Interactive option is for - It constantly normalizes the weights while you're weightpainting so that if you paint influence for one joint, the influence of other joints decreases for those vertices. Normalize weights: Post on the other hand doesn't do that right away so you can end up with weird values.)

I'll try.

Edit: Thank you! It now got inside the model editor with its armature in place! I don't know how to thank you enough!