Easy way to edit magitech units?

[MirceaKitsune]

I want to take a shot at making my own factions, which I want to create by remodeling and retexturing existing units in Blender. I got the Blender tutorial from here but am not too experienced with Blender and modeling overall (just know how to move verticles around mostly) and the steps described there kinda feel too much for me.

I was initially hoping i could just import a model from data, edit verticle positions and export it back, but animations make that impossible. What I'm wondering is if there are any .blend sources of all the units in magitech that are public and can be downloaded, which can be opened edited and exported without having to relink verticles to bones, remake the UV mapping and all that. If not, is there any way for Blender to mix all g3ds of the same unit together or work with all of them at a time so only the model can be modified and the animation kept in each? Would help a lot to know an easy way of editing any of the characters if possible. Thanks.

[-Archmage-]

I have experience with Blender, I can model, and animate, but not texture, I might be willing to pitch in something.

I want to take a shot at making my own factions, which I want to create by remodeling and retexturing existing units in Blender. I got the Blender tutorial from here but am not too experienced with Blender and modeling overall (just know how to move verticles around mostly) and the steps described there feel too complex and too much for me.

I'm glad you want to mod, also I have not seen that Blender tutorial before.

I was initially hoping i could just import a model from data, edit verticle positions and export it back, but animations make that impossible. What I'm wondering is if there are any .blend sources of all the units in magitech that are public and can be downloaded, which can be opened edited and exported without having to relink verticles to bones, remake the UV mapping and all that. If not, is there any way for Blender to mix all g3ds of the same unit together or work with all of them at a time so only the model can be modified and the animation kept in each? Would help a lot to know an easy way of editing any of the characters if possible. Thanks.

Well, you can certainly import these models into blender, but that isn't all the models. I recommend PMing Tucho about getting models that you can import into Blender. Also reconnecting the bones, isn't that hard, I could do it in 10-20 minutes, or do a sloppy job with bone heat in about 10 secs ................

I'd recommend googling Blender tutorials, specifically, "Blender basic commands", which is really the search that got me back into modeling, after I sort of gave up on it.

Good Luck, and hope this helps!

[John.d.h]

You can pay attention to this thread in the upcoming weeks.  There are some of us who are planning on putting together some basic Blender tutorials that should help you with what you need.  Until then, Google is your friend (and Youtube), and there are lots of tutorials on Blender's website as well.

[MirceaKitsune]

Thanks. I'll read that topic, though I found Blender tutorials on the net previously for the basics. And that link was something I was looking for regarding models, even if many of them are indeed missing.

My question still is what to do after I have the .obj file in Blender. They don't seem to contain any skeleton nor animation, and my skills are far below animation or anything of the sort atm. I have a Glest skeleton with animations but that's only for walking units, and would be useless for characters like the horse rider.

[John.d.h]

Unfortunately, all of the Magitech animations were made in 3DS, not Blender, so you can't really use them unless you have a spare $3000 in your pocket.  Hopefully I'll have a video tutorial put together within the next week or so that will be able to take a complete noob and have them making halfway-decent animations.  If you're in a hurry, and you don't want to wait for my tutorial, you can check out the one that I learned from here, but it's not really specific to Glest, so there are a few things that might be a bit misleading.

[-Archmage-]

I learned by sort of following the Glest Guides tutorials, and then PMing what I could get down to Eliminator, and he took some pics, and worte text on the screen, to help me.
And it worked!

As for rigging I figured that one out myself. But I don't know how to do complex riggings only basic, which is why my animations look a little irregular, if I don't put a lot of time into them that is.

First I'd recommend learning how to make a model from scratch, because that will get you some unique models instead of tweaked Swordsmen. What we need in mods is new, not modified.
Besides I think once you get more into Blender I think you would really enjoy modeling! Although if you modify things well, and make them very unique, and possibly add a few of your own, you could have a great mod.

Good Luck learning Blender!

[MirceaKitsune]

Yeah, new stuff is usually better, though sometimes edits are the best choice if you don't want to work on everything from a scratch or don't know how. And too bad there's no version for Blender... will wait for the tutorial or look into it more until then, if there isn't any way to extract the animations from the .g3d files either.

[-Archmage-]

I'm not sure..............
John, can you move vertices, edges, or faces, and have the vertex groups stay intact, along with the animation?

[John.d.h]

Yes you can!  I'm not sure about adding new vertices, like through subdivision, though.

[MirceaKitsune]

That's great then Is there any tutorial or advice on how that can be done please? While of course putting the same new model in each g3d without changing the animation (I think that can be done by copying and replacing only the model between files if I'm correct). I also couldn't find a working blender g3d importer / exporter script... the ones here don't work so well.

As for the linking, I've had a small experience with linking verticles to bones in the past for another game, just usually try to avoid it. If a verticle happened to get mislinked the character would have 'spikes' poking out of it in-game, which is why I'm worried to do linking because there's no way to preview such errors until the character animates in game and when you find a spike discovering the responsible verticle can be hard.

[Omega]

Currently the importer imports G3D models with shape keys for the animations. I'm doing some experiments seeing if there's ANY way that I can make these into the animation again. No success yet, but still trying. Of course, even if I am successful, that will mean that you can only have the animation as it is, though you could put in a few extras if you wanted, and still would be handy knowledge. Maybe someone should take the glest models and bone them. I did a modified guard once before (no use to you, it's not a guard anymore) and it worked well. However, it has the disadvantage of limb movement, since the arms are at his side from the start, so its hard to move them upwards, etc; As well, bone heating works like crap, so naming the groups is the only method.

[John.d.h]

I've always preferred weight painting over bone heat or vert groups.

If a verticle happened to get mislinked the character would have 'spikes' poking out of it in-game, which is why I'm worried to do linking because there's no way to preview such errors until the character animates in game and when you find a spike discovering the responsible verticle can be hard.

Actually, just move the character around a bit and anything poking out should be readily obvious, especially if you have a "master" bone that is the highest parent of all other bones, in which case you can just grab the master bone and move the whole model across the screen.  Then any vertex poking out should be really easy to spot.