3D Animations and Blender

[PythonBlue]

So, for anyone here who wants to pursue animated 3D modeling but can't get Maya for whatever reason, I made a breakthrough last week.

Thanks to the 1.3 update to Amnesia, it's now possible to import animated Blender models provided they were exported in .fbx format! Unfortunately, there are some quirks to be addressed in order to get your model working:

1. This may apply to all .fbx files, but regardless, make sure your material name in Blender is identical to the name of the dds files you want applied. This quirk I didn't notice with .dae files, but still, if you don't follow this rule with .fbx's, the model viewer will crash, and the model editor will display an invisible mesh.

2. For animated models, there's a chance that not all vertices will be attached to a bone, as I learned the hard way with a model I exported from Halo for testing. The simplest fix for this is to separate all the faces from each other in Blender, which, unfortunately, will result in flat shading instead of the more realistic smooth shading, but this side effect can be made more subtle with a high polygon count. If anyone else who's succeeded with Blender managed to implement a better fix, by all means, let me know.

UPDATE: the most effective way to correct broken vertices for rigged models without sacrificing smooth shading: when you export your Blender model to FBX, make sure that all edges are split, like before, and that you enable face smoothing, the latter being in the FBX export settings.

So, bearing these tips in mind, you'll now be able to feasibly have custom-modeled NPC's and enemies in Amnesia without use of Maya!

Apologies if I posted old news; I just don't see anything about this in the development wiki.

[Mudbill]

If you feel like it, you can write a wiki article yourself

Otherwise this thread should maybe be in Development Articles, idk.

[PythonBlue]

Right, I realize I probably should've posted this in a more specific place. Apologies for that. Mods, feel free to move this thread to wherever it better fits.

[Traggey]

The textures have always had to be the same name, no matter what software or format we've been using.

As for your vetex problem, don't fuck with the smoothing, that will break any potential baked normal maps and a high polygon count should be avoided, instead you simply open the skinning tools and weightpaint the missing verts back onto the rig.

[PythonBlue]

The textures have always had to be the same name, no matter what software or format we've been using.

As for your vetex problem, don't fuck with the smoothing, that will break any potential baked normal maps and a high polygon count should be avoided, instead you simply open the skinning tools and weightpaint the missing verts back onto the rig.

In regards to the vertices, unfortunately, it's not as simple as that. Everything in the mesh is fully weighted before loading into Amnesia. Part of the delay in my response was the result of looking into it further, and I may have diagnosed my problem with the bad vertices: all of the vertices that were disconnected from bones during import had more than six edges attached to them. This would easily explain why separating each edge from each other fixes that problem at the cost of creating shading problems.

[Traggey]

Sounds like you're working with some really bad geometry there, mind showing us a print?

[PythonBlue]

Sounds like you're working with some really bad geometry there, mind showing us a print?

Perhaps that may be the case. In my defense, though, I didn't create the model; I was just converting it.

I'll send over a sample image later when I'm home; out of town atm. Course, I need to make a correction: it actually might have to do with how sharp some edges of the model are, as all of the vertices I'm certain were problematic had edges that weren't the smoothest for the normals, and smoothing those particular angles does lessen the problem significantly.

[PythonBlue]

Alright, I officially fixed the vertex problem I was having without use of an unnecessarily high polygon count. Will edit the original post with the solution.

[Traggey]

I feel like I have to point out, since it seems you have not actually made the models yourself, here on the forums we do NOT alow usage of models ripped from other game titles.

[PythonBlue]

I feel like I have to point out, since it seems you have not actually made the models yourself, here on the forums we do NOT alow usage of models ripped from other game titles.

You'd definitely be correct and justified if I had done something like enable download of what I was working with, but I didn't. I intended this thread first and foremost as a guide regarding exporting in Blender; the particular model I had used I had only mentioned as an example.