Help on Pyramid Head Model

[vengey]

Okay guys so I have condensed this model down to approximately 6mb, it is all rigged, it is assigned one single texture so that HPL doesn't get cranky with multiple .mats on one file and yet the model continues to crash when being imported into Model Editor. It is all ready for animating, but I can't get to that until I even have it importing into Amnesia. This isn't the first model I have made and imported into Amnesia, but all the previous ones were simply inanimate objects or cabinets etc. I am not a professional in anyway with importing enemy models, but once I get this character in it can be smooth sailing. I did not do the rigging, it was automatically rigged via HumanIK in the program MakeHuman the rest was made by myself, but everything is properly rigged from the base mesh and nothing is connected to said mesh to cause any problems, I will do that later when I get to animating. Anyways this is what I got so far, but the rig just crashes model editor. Any suggestions other than reduce file size more because that is my next bet.

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Also I am kinda depressed I was forced to take away the smoothing from the model and modify the textures due to filesize considering I had a much sexier model before this piece of work....damn you Amnesia! (Jk still love you)

[Juras]

How many poly's does the mesh have? Does the rig contain any cotrollers/IK handles? Or is it just joints? Also if you're going to export the model with the rig you need to bind the rig to the mesh so the model is skinned which as I understood you didn't do? Lastly, open the file in the model viewer and show what the log file says.

[vengey]

According to Maya, it is skinned, the model is rigged for HumanIK, although I think it is just all joints. Everything is rigged and skinned and it doesnt seen to have an excess of faces especially with the one I rendered with the faces very apparent. I guess it could be that there may not be any controllers or handles, but I would have figured exporting the rig via HumanIK would've done thay. Regardless do you have a link or specific way to add the handles I could look at? (I will google it too just to be on the safe side), but hopefully this be the case.

[Mudbill]

Go enable that, and you can see just how many polys you have. Pay attention to the tris. That's the real amount. You should also never have more vertecies than faces, just in case you didn't know. According to the image, it does look fairly low-poly. If I were to guess, I'd say between 2-4k, which is okay for a monster. I don't quite remember, but I think the Grunt has around 2k.

Also, are you exporting the model correctly? No light, no camera, triangulated.

Perhaps you can attach the log file for the ModelViewer / Editor after failing to load it?

[vengey]

I cleared out the hierarchy by Optimizing the scene and made sure all Im exporting is the model and the rig with triangulated vertices. Im in my philosophy class right now and wont be back to my dorm until after my C# class. However assuming I do have more vertices than faces, other than using the Reduce function to simplify the model, how would I go about optimizing said model so I can get on that after my last class really appreciate the help btw Mudbill and Juras as well as the quick responses

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Oh and animations exported as well but that would be implied for when I do that later on

[Juras]

Basically what you want to do is make sure that the model is properly skinned (using the smooth bind tool and making sure that the max influences is set to 3 or it will definetely crash!), then you should also normalize the weights (this option is located in skin/edit smooth skin). When you export make sure the "joints and skin" box is checked, "animations" box is unchecked (you will check it when exporting animations though). Aslong as the model doesnt have too many polys (around 10k is accecptable) and you export the rigged model without any controllers or IK's and follow those steps it should work fine. If it still crashes please show your model viewer log file and in worst case scenario, if it still won't work you can send the file to me and I can look at it myself

When it comes to making animations, you basically use your rigged file as a copy and it doesnt matter if your rig has controllers or IK handles AS LONG AS you bake your animation when you're done with it and delete the controllers and the IK's before exporting. When you bake the animations it will basically key every frame from your controllers and IK's. Many think that you can only use joints when animating monsters for HPL2 but it's not true. You export the animation ONLY WITH joints after you baked it using your controllers,IK's,etc. I did it myself on few monsters and it works perfectly.

[vengey]

HOLY CRAP THAT MIGHT BE IT. Because this model I havent personally rigged myself BUT Models I have personally rigged in the past such as my Lisa Trevor model and the nurse model I tried importing a while back all did the same thing too. This Pyramid Head model is all custom made but not custom rigged and everything I have custom made has imported perfectly but rigs were another story. Your one sentence. Make sure max influences is set to three must certainly be the issue because I remember rigging a Lisa Trevor model myself a while ago with influences set to 7 not 3 and it crashed and last I checked two days ago examining the rig that was imported it was set to 5 influences. So assuming I change that to three it should hopefully work because I know for a fact it isnt a matter of face counts or multiple materials used since it is all one texture. Shit Juras where were you when I needed you months back. When I get back to the dorm and fix that, I swear to god if it works then, I will jump through this fucking screen and hug you because you would have solved an issue that has veered me away from adding custom characters to Amnesia for almost a year now.

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Otherwise, back to square one xD

[Juras]

HOLY CRAP THAT MIGHT BE IT. Because this model I havent personally rigged myself BUT Models I have personally rigged in the past such as my Lisa Trevor model and the nurse model I tried importing a while back all did the same thing too. This Pyramid Head model is all custom made but not custom rigged and everything I have custom made has imported perfectly but rigs were another story. Your one sentence. Make sure max influences is set to three must certainly be the issue because I remember rigging a Lisa Trevor model myself a while ago with influences set to 7 not 3 and it crashed and last I checked two days ago examining the rig that was imported it was set to 5 influences. So assuming I change that to three it should hopefully work because I know for a fact it isnt a matter of face counts or multiple materials used since it is all one texture. Shit Juras where were you when I needed you months back. When I get back to the dorm and fix that, I swear to god if it works then, I will jump through this fucking screen and hug you because you would have solved an issue that has veered me away from adding custom characters to Amnesia for almost a year now.

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Otherwise, back to square one xD

Hahaha that made me laugh! But yeah, if the max influences are more than 3 it will 100% crash. I really hope it will fix your crashes and if not, I can take a look at the model and see if I can find the problem

[vengey]

Okay so update

I checked the model and it is all good
I have simplified it down to approximately 9,990 faces which is as low as I am going because anymore and he will look odd, he already looks odd with the muscle loss due to simplifying the hell out of the mesh.

GOOD NEWS:
Pyramid Head imports into HPL Model Editor textures and all

BAD NEWS:
Pyramid Head imports into HPL WITHOUT rig
This means the whole rig is broken without even binding it to the skin yet

Soooooo I am going to just say screw it and make my own rig like I used to and bind it that way. If that doesn't work, could I take you up on your offer Juras and have you take a look at it? He can be imported...just not with the current rig it looks like

[Juras]

Hmm okay. 9,990 faces is still alot (thats around 20k polys) but the enigne should handle it, but I would still reduce it to atleast 8000 faces. You do know that you can bake a normal map from a high poly mesh and then apply it to the low poly mesh and the low poly mesh will look as good as the high poly? That's how the brute and the servant and the monsters I created was done. My 8k-10k poly meshes look as good as a 2-5 million poly sculpts. Also you said that the rig didnt import in the editor but did you try exporting the rigged model with the skin binded to it?

If it still doesn't work just send the me the file and I'll take a look at it. But I will be gone tommorow for about 5 days I won't be able to do it right away. Anyway, hope we can get your monster to work soon. I remember when I had to do this with my first monster, it was probably the most annoying expierence I ever had trying to get something working lol