Blender to MD5 to Articulated Figure AF

[solarsplace]

Hi

 

Slightly cheeky question, but it appears I have no where else to turn..... I tried to get some help on D3 world and have spend days searching the internet, mod wiki and D3 world - but nothing I have found so far has worked.

 

Would anyone here please be kind enough to send me a .blend file of any model that they have successfully exported as a .MD5 mesh & anim and then been able to create a .af file from?

 

I have spend days on this now days and days. I have my Chicken modelled and animated and it wanders around and occasionally stops for a peck and all is great

 

So then I think, OK we need to create the ragdoll now, so we load up EditAfs and spawn the Chicken AF into the map, and instead of a lovely T-pose and adding joints and bones where the joints and bones should be, I have basically a chicken in the shape of a melted wellington boot

 

I'm beginning to thing it the bone set-up I have done that is wrong, but Ive spent so long on it now, its difficult to see the woods from the trees. I even made a really simple stick figure with just a few bones and that suffers the same problem

 

Any .blend files or advice would be gratefully appreciated.

[Baddcog]

I don't think anyone is using Blender with MD5's, just the ase exporter (no anims)

 

One critical thing is you need an 'Origin' Bone. That should be zero rotation, zero scale and placed at 0,0,0. Then link your 'hip' bone or whatever to it.

 

use Origin to move foward (walk,run speed), use hip for tilt, jump, etc...

 

I think you don't have origin so your model collapses? Not sure though, haven't used Blender.

 

It's also been quite awhile since I set up a new AF, but I don't recal ever having a collapsed mesh. (always had Origin bone though)

[Arcturus]

I don't think anyone is using Blender with MD5's, just the ase exporter (no anims)

I've been using. http://www.megaupload.com/?d=F80ZSTLI here's a model that will be part of the 1.03 update. A blend file and an af.

[solarsplace]

@Baddcog

 

Thank you for taking the time to post and your advice, much appreciated.

 

The model did have an origin bone, as the AF editor will complain or just plain crash if it is missing. Some more experements last night fairly conclusivly point to my novice bone setup as the problem. Where it works OK for an animated entity, either the engine or the exporter or both just cannot tolerate bones set up like this for work with AF's : http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Tutorials/Animation/BSoD/Character_Animation/Upper_body_armature

 

Looking at all the stock monsters (and the saddle model from Arcturus) all the bones are set up in a totally different way as small constant sized discreet joints.

 

@Arcturus

 

Thank you very much for posting the files, massively appreciated. This is a huge bonus as it allows me to prove or disprove that the tools / version I have are at least capable of exporting 'correct' data for the engine.

 

Very nice model BTW

 

Thanks again.

[Arcturus]

Where it works OK for an animated entity, either the engine or the exporter or both just cannot tolerate bones set up like this for work with AF's : http://wiki.blender....r_body_armature

Saddle is perhaps not the best example because it was not meant to be animated, that's why I didn't connect bones. Bone chains are exported normally. Without them it would be next to impossible to animate limbs in Blender. However, I have some problems with inverse kinematics inside of the game and I suspect it's a problem with Blender. Anyway I know that bones should not be rotated on their own axis like on the second picture:

 

 

It can cause trouble. Also don't rotate/scale whole armature.

Looking at all the stock monsters (and the saddle model from Arcturus) all the bones are set up in a totally different way as small constant sized discreet joints.

It seems that Blender has its own system of animation that is different from other applications. I haven't tried any, though. Blender's MD5 exporter is not perfect. Sometimes for example exported mesh is slightly twitching - some very small random movements are added that weren't in the original animation inside of the Blender. And I'm still not sure what causes it.

Very nice model BTW

Thanks. Wait till you see it textured

[solarsplace]

Hi Arcturus

 

Thank you for the great help, especially those images.

 

It was basically a combination of my novice bone set-up and bad bone roll as shown in picture 2 that was causing all the model and AF problems.

 

The 'clear bone roll z-axis up' function does not seem to work properly in Blender 2.49 (It probably does, just me not setting something properly) anyway it was causing all the bones to have an odd roll. Once the origin bone has a bad roll, everything built on top is basically shafted.

 

I will keep an eye on the TDM bug tracker and see if there is some code bug I can fix as a thanks for the help.

 

Regards

[solarsplace]

Hi

 

Can I have permission to use your example picture please.

 

What I am trying to put together is a knowledge base & basic work flow / how to guide on how to create and get a working ai / monster model into idtech. Atm was planning on making this public article for the benefit of everyone. For the time being my initial thought was to post this on mod wiki, and perhaps when it has decent content you may like to have a copy on the TDM Wiki?

 

Seems to me that there is still no single place on the internet that has this kind of thing, such as known issues, things to watch out for, do's and don'ts etc. I think it would help a lot of people and hopefully we may see some new monsters etc for Doom3 mods too!

 

Thanks in advance

 

 

Saddle is perhaps not the best example because it was not meant to be animated, that's why I didn't connect bones. Bone chains are exported normally. Without them it would be next to impossible to animate limbs in Blender. However, I have some problems with inverse kinematics inside of the game and I suspect it's a problem with Blender. Anyway I know that bones should not be rotated on their own axis like on the second picture:

 

 

It can cause trouble. Also don't rotate/scale whole armature.

 

It seems that Blender has its own system of animation that is different from other applications. I haven't tried any, though. Blender's MD5 exporter is not perfect. Sometimes for example exported mesh is slightly twitching - some very small random movements are added that weren't in the original animation inside of the Blender. And I'm still not sure what causes it.

 

Thanks. Wait till you see it textured

Edited January 17, 2012 by solarsplace

[Arcturus]

Of course you may use them