Porting Character Models Into UT3

[Elis]

Well time to start early as possible :)

So far ive been able to "mod" characters already ingame, add ronin heads to iron guards etc, and just switching parts, taking the locked stuff, and switching it around.. can make some messed up characters :), ronin with a krall head is the best :)..,

so i now know how to take models that are in a upk file and put them into game.. what i dont know.. is what format the models are in, and i cannot tell as i cannot access the .upk or read it in anyway, i may try to hex the files later hoping to see some kind of arc data and name listings,

theres no ut3 mod thing up at the udn yet.. so not sure if its still psk, and not sure even if it is that the current actorx plugin would output ut3 supported model files.

so no custom models yet.. but know how to alter/add completed ut3 models to a game.. if anyone can help in completeing a ut3 model.. then were done :)

[Dekrayzis]

I've created a Xan model. Kit bashed together from the models in UT3 & Ut2004 and put them into 3dsmax.
There seems to be a problem though.
The UT2004 Models seem to be HUGE compared to the UT3 scale. I found this out when Rigging the character and importing into Unrealed4, then had to re-rig him on a smaller scale. Had to shrink it down about 200%.

I seperated the models into each category group, arms, torso, Boots, etc. so he can be customized to the players preference. I finally got it looking great in the Character customization screen. But go to play as him in game. he's totally messed up. Not sure what the hell is up with that. :(

[Elis]

Hmm, UnrealEd4.. its called UT3 Editor on my side :P,

by the way, how are u doing this from start to finish?.. I know u need to edit the DefaultCustomChar.ini in the C:\Program Files\Unreal Tournament 3\UTGame\Config directory to actually add the model (and parts if any), however im still confused about the file format, and u say u rigged it to a skeleton, what skeleton and how did u get that skeleton..,

me thinks the skeleton your using is from a source not ut3, perhaps ut2k4?.. and in ut3 the skeleton is different thus it auto resizes the bone making the mesh weird, in my experience, if u take 3 bones and set thier size to a value, then make an animation with the 3 same bones, but X2 the size, ingame the mesh attached to those 3 bones when animated on that animation will double th size of the mesh as well, and in same cases if bones are not set properly itll pull them into certain directions, specially if u have no joint constaints,

and another question, how did u get your model into the editor, UT3 Editor has no animation or model related tools as far as ive seen,

on a side note, i hexed one of the .upks.. turns out kind of weird, gives me data on bone names, textures, references to model parts, and how whole crapload of command values and settings for the model.. but no data on any file formats.., so not sure if psk is the type,

btw, heres somethign fun to try,

open the DefaultCustomChar.ini with wordpad, and do edit > replace, and replace true with false, save the ini, load game and hit yes update all files, go ingame and pull down console (f10, tilde, tab, whatever) and type unlockallchars and enter, ull see a message come up if u got it right, then go setup a character, ull notice alot of differences ;), specially all the bot specific setups, models, parts, factions, etc. :)

[Dekrayzis]

Ut3Editor/GearsEditor/Unrealed4... Same thing. :p
ActorX for 3dsmax8 works fine for Importing PSK files. not tried adding animations into UT3 yet.


Heres the run through. Sorry if theres mistakes or doesnt make sense its 4am.

1.) First thing i did was to unlock all characters

2.), I loaded up 'UT3editor through another tool, and extracted the meshes I required.

3.)Imported the meshes into 3dsmax, and kitbashed them together with parts from the UT2004 XAN Model. Head, Hands, Part of the torso.

4.) This is where it got sorta confusing for me. So i studied the Character part files, Arms, Torso, Helmets, Thighs, etc. and switched on the Skeletal rig. it appears that the full Character rig is used for each character part. So back in 3dsmax I opened the UT2004 character rig and rigged each part individually.so add only arms to the rig, export it out as PSk. then delete it from the rig, Rigged the head, export out, Delete, so on and so on, until all parts were rigged to the skeleton. then imported all PSKs into UT3Editor

5.) Once they were in a new package, with the same nametypes as the corrupt parts. (Each part ending in 05.) I slapped some textures on it(dont really care at the moment) and saved it.

6.) Went through the CustomChar.ini file for all the parts and copied pasted them into the same section. changed the file paths to look for my files, Changed all part IDs to E. (E being 05.) Changed the name of the character to Xan, and saved.

Ran the game, and it appeared in the list with all parts swapable with standard UT3 parts. only the head cannot be changed.

[Elis]

so ut3 does use psks then :), sry but ive worked with other games, but never the unreal series before, so im a lil in the dark here :),

this tool, ah yes i know, very useful it is ;)

and how exactly did u import psks into ut3?, i finally found that window and the ability to see meshes.. but in process my lappy turned off from overheating (upgrade in the works - cleaning also in the works ;P), perhaps with an alnight study i can find this stuff out.. itd be nice to have a .ini writter for custom models so u dont have to do all that work urself,.. but then again your making your life alot harder by making parts to the model.. its easier to make a custom model, set all parts to 0/0 except 1 part to 1/0 and make that 1 part the entire model,

and just a few more questions, again, how did u get the skeleton? not the mesh, the skeleton, u said u turned it on? is it in the actorx plugin somewhere?

and whats the rules for rigging? how many bones may influence a single vert? - wouldnt wanna blend too much?,

and once u export from max, do u place in a folder in ut3 somewhere and thats it?? do u need to convert the psk, textures, etc, to a upk format from within the editor?,

and how do u know all this? that stupid udn is useless..

this place is owned by epic, cant they put thier input into these kinds of questions,,.. make all these tools, but dont offer community support :confused:

[geodav]

here's the page to keep an eye on http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/UT3Mods.html
check the bit about "how to make custom content" and if you goto the bottom of the page you'll find some character max files

[Dekrayzis]

Just seen it. :)
Edit:
You need 3dsMax 9 to open the files

[Mandinga]

I recently downloaded the skeletons on the udn page, I resized then to the proportions of my character. I don't have the game yet so I cn't test it yet, if yu resize the bipd in max does that produce strange effects in UT3? Does UT3 ED have some sort of retargeting feature?

The skeletons are CS bipeds with a few trwist joints added, the weapon attachment is free floating to adjust correctly to ny model. They have a lot of funky controls for hands and feet.

Do the special editions tutorials shed anymore light on this?

[Elis]

w00t for the skeletons, thx a bunch, can now finally get somewhere and start rigging stuff :)

btw, dont resize the skeleton u monkey, the skeleton is constant, if u change anything on it, then u will need to redo all the animations otherwise ingame ull either get crashes or a really messy looking mesh, resize the mesh to the skeleton, thas all, dont resize the skeleton! - i should probley be calling epic up and telling them this as well.. seems theyve made a horde of mistakes

well from here i guess its just learning how to tell a model where its animations and textures are, all un that dam ut3 editor.. arg..

[geodav]

@Mandinga sorry afaik the video's in the CE only cover map making, great vid's but there's more to modding than just maps

[Elis]

well if no one else puts up a how to guide for making custom models then i guess i shall :), but i dont do videos!

[Denny]

I'm actually going to get started on video tutorials soon. There's way too little covered on characters and animations.

[geodav]

@Elis any help would be most gratefull as my team has atm 8 characters we need to get in so please post what info you cheers

[Caravaggio]

Though I'm pretty much stalking certain people as it is I guess I'll be looking for those tuts just to be sure. Takes so long to finish something now...

Anyone know how the softbody meshes are defined? Like the flags or the skirts? Is it selectable in the editor or does the whole mesh have to be made that way before attaching it to a character?

[Elis]

if u need any help Denny let me know, ill put a pack of ice under my lappy to ensure it doesnt give up again :(

[Emmet Otter]

Well time to start early as possible :)

So far ive been able to "mod" characters already ingame, add ronin heads to iron guards etc, and just switching parts, taking the locked stuff, and switching it around.. can make some messed up characters :), ronin with a krall head is the best :)

How were you able to do this? I sent a pm.

[Elis]

just look for the customchar.ini, in there is the setup for all the parts, each bot uses a different setup of parts, some parts not even ingame ever, change any true values to false, itll unlock all the special setups for bots, then when u edit ur char go choose a bot and look for those special parts, in there as well is names of the factions, bots, everything, swap parts, names, team names, etc :)

[Caravaggio]

Hmmm, so I've got a test package with material and psk files good. My problem now is the animset, the "k_animhuman_BaseMale [124]" works good when I select it but I can't seem to tell it to "stick". It's like selecting it only previews it with my own model. In the last game there was a simple copy/paste command in the filemenu, not found by me here...

Was hoping to at least get to the text part tonight. It can't involve editing the DefaultCustomChar.ini can it? I keep thinking if I copy it to a new file and just cull it down to my own model.... ...tired.

Still looking for a way to do softbodies. I looked at the human male character 2/main character skeleton and I thought his skirt would be in one of the "extra mesh" slots in the browser, but no, it's all one mesh. There's a toggle cloth button above, but doesn't do anything immediate. Any ideas?
edt: his skirt thing is boned so I guess that's it. I was thinking it was like the flag cloth.

[Sinnthetika]

Hey Caravaggio, I hope to see stuff from you again.

[JaFO]

I'm looking at the Unrealscript-classes for Characters, which is quite a bit more complicated compared to previous versions.

One important thing I did notice already however and that is that (custom) Voicepacks are definitely not supported at the moment!



// @TODO: VOICE PACK


I probably need to look deeper into the code to see how they've managed to link voicepacks to characters.
I guess this means that for the time being everyone will sound like a default male, unless you add them to one of the existing factions ...

[Emmet Otter]

just look for the customchar.ini, in there is the setup for all the parts, each bot uses a different setup of parts, some parts not even ingame ever, change any true values to false, itll unlock all the special setups for bots, then when u edit ur char go choose a bot and look for those special parts, in there as well is names of the factions, bots, everything, swap parts, names, team names, etc :)Yeah, I unlocked them all and all I got was a mixed combinations of chraracters within their factions.

Could you share me the line of the ronin/krall you did so that I can get an idea of how you changed that line? I was trying that myself but I think I kept getting it wrong. I wanna make a lauren body with jesters thighs and boots if thats possible.

Thanks:)

[Caravaggio]

Lineage girl? Yo!
Sorry I never finished that Faye model...
Maybe this time.

Whoa, I just noticed Ued is taking up 70% cpu and 650mb of ram just sitting there. Wow.

Been opening info trees everywhere and still can't find what I'm looking for. Under cookedpc/characters there seems to be the animation file itself, which I wasn't expecting to find separate from the mesh, but it is of course cooked and therefore non exportable. I'm going to cry like a little girl if it turns out you can't do it from cooked packages like the skinners and levelers are having trouble with...

[L0rdGunn3r]

What did you use to extract the meshes from UE3?



Ut3Editor/GearsEditor/Unrealed4... Same thing. :p
ActorX for 3dsmax8 works fine for Importing PSK files. not tried adding animations into UT3 yet.


Heres the run through. Sorry if theres mistakes or doesnt make sense its 4am.

1.) First thing i did was to unlock all characters

2.), I loaded up 'UT3editor through another tool, and extracted the meshes I required.

3.)Imported the meshes into 3dsmax, and kitbashed them together with parts from the UT2004 XAN Model. Head, Hands, Part of the torso.

4.) This is where it got sorta confusing for me. So i studied the Character part files, Arms, Torso, Helmets, Thighs, etc. and switched on the Skeletal rig. it appears that the full Character rig is used for each character part. So back in 3dsmax I opened the UT2004 character rig and rigged each part individually.so add only arms to the rig, export it out as PSk. then delete it from the rig, Rigged the head, export out, Delete, so on and so on, until all parts were rigged to the skeleton. then imported all PSKs into UT3Editor

5.) Once they were in a new package, with the same nametypes as the corrupt parts. (Each part ending in 05.) I slapped some textures on it(dont really care at the moment) and saved it.

6.) Went through the CustomChar.ini file for all the parts and copied pasted them into the same section. changed the file paths to look for my files, Changed all part IDs to E. (E being 05.) Changed the name of the character to Xan, and saved.

Ran the game, and it appeared in the list with all parts swapable with standard UT3 parts. only the head cannot be changed.

[Denny]

Caravaggio >> In UT3 you have the Skeletal Mesh, the AnimSet and the AnimTree. You can choose to preview your character in the AnimSet by selecting your Skeletal Mesh. In the AnimTree there's a dropdown list to do the exact same thing, there should also be a choice for telling the AnimTree what AnimSet to use.

I hope that helped.

[Caravaggio]

I'm with you until that last part, "telling the animtree what animset to use". By animtree do you mean the animseq(uences), because I don't see the word tree anywhere (you should see me get lost in department stores). I'd be happy if it would just stick in the preview, but when I close it and open it again it won't even remember that. In 2k4 you import your psk, open a character .ukx, copy the defaultanimation from the animation property, paste it into your model and then use the "link animation and mesh" command from the file menu. Obviously nothing like what's there now.

edt: when you say animtree you just mean the properties tree, with the fold down buttons? That makes more sense.

For a while I was thinking it may be possible to link to the regular humanmale animations once someone figures out the actual code, just like when we used to use the upl files to define skins and behaviors, at least I can't think of another reason the animations have been given the luxury of their own visible files. But when I look through the .ini file mentioned here before, or for that matter any of the text files in the ut3 folder, windows search finds no phrase "animhuman" which would indicate a link to the separate animation file the default models use. So even if did know how the code worked, that guess would be wrong too. :(

[Reverse]

Could you share me the line of the ronin/krall you did so that I can get an idea of how you changed that line? I was trying that myself but I think I kept getting it wrong. I wanna make a lauren body with jesters thighs and boots if thats possible.

Thanks:)

I'd like to know this aswell :)

EDIT: is it possible to add an ironguard males facemask to an ironguard female, since they don't have any? just an example

[Denny]

Go to the package called CH_AnimHuman_Tree and double click the one with 80 nodes. In the empty window to the right, scroll out (zoom out). There you have a typical AnimTree.

Let's just say that it's in the AnimTree where you do all the magic like blending between poses and do custom stuff which coders may call upon. For example, if you want the guy for some reason to change the way his lower body walks when he uses a certain weapon, then you would create a new list for the coders and make a new set of connections and animsequences in the AnimTree. Then all the coder has to do is call on the list you made. :)

[Caravaggio]

Ah, that's what that was. Yeah. That's crazy.
I think I should spend this time actually working on the model itself and wait for better documentation. I couldn't find a way to edit the pulldown and the plethora of nodes that are brought up from the right click menu might very well drive me mad without knowing something about. Not sure I like the look of that thing at all...

Thanks for pointing that out.

[Emmet Otter]

I'd like to know this aswell :)

EDIT: is it possible to add an ironguard males facemask to an ironguard female, since they don't have any? just an example

Quote from Elis


look for the customchar ini and in there is the setup, simply change whatever values u like, eg, lauren, u could change her head by simply looking for headid and change its value, the values of the heads are arranged a-whatever and by family id,

at the top of the file is the library that defines what head/parts belong to what families and what thier values are, change those to get a krall head into the iron guard,

just be sure to save a backup of the original, and beware that krall, female, and male skeletons differ somewhat,,.. i havent fully tested some things out so it could end up ur model will crash once used ingame, or it may appear brutally ugly..

From shadow_dragon at beyondunreal forums


To change the character parts from one faction to another;


Parts=(Part=PART_ShoPad,ObjectName="CH_IronGuard_Male.Mesh.SK_CH_IronG_Male_XShoPad03",PartID="C",FamilyID="IRNM")

Right, that's your line for one of the Iron guard male shoulders.
Quite simply
1. select the line you want, copy it and paste it on a line at the top so it's easy to find your custom lines (or come up with your own layout.)
2,Then rename it so it says;


Parts=(Part=PART_ShoPad,ObjectName="CH_IronGuard_Male.Mesh.SK_CH_IronG_Male_XShoPad03",PartID="E",FamilyID="TWIM")

What you've done here is changed IRNM to TWIM*, ie, made an ironguard male shoulderpad into a Ronin male shoulderpad.
The other thing you've done here is change the "PartID=" section, now i've guessed the letter E with the assumption that TWIM has 4 "Shopads"(Shoulderpads) but i believe it might have a couple more. Simply scroll down the INI and find the "Shopads" with "TWIM" on the line, find out how many already exist and letter your new parts accordingly.

To make Ronin parts into ironguard simply copy and paste the TWIM lines and do the opposite of the above.

For female parts use the lines which have a FamilyID that ends in "F" rather than "M" ie TWIF not TWIM. IIRC

Don't put Krall or Robot **parts on human factions and vice versa as their animation skeletons are different. The Krall shoulderpads do kinda sit nicely on the human characters in the selection screen but will float off in game.

Hope that helps and that's simply how i did it, i imagine there are better ways but we're still kinda feeling our way through the dark on the custom character stuff and i'm an artist, i ain't no coder. :S

*I'm pretty sure from memory that Ronin = TWIM i might be wrong but i assumed they were originally intended to be "Twinsouls" or so.
** I haven't actually tried robot parts... they may have human animations, worth a go i guess but i can't see them missing terribly well.

[COGG1138]

What did you use to extract the meshes from UE3?

is it a question of national security or should I continue to google for "that certain tool to load UT3 editor, you know, very handy..." ???? -thank you

[COGG1138]

Ut3Editor/GearsEditor/Unrealed4... Same thing. :p
ActorX for 3dsmax8 works fine for Importing PSK files. not tried adding animations into UT3 yet.


Heres the run through. Sorry if theres mistakes or doesnt make sense its 4am.

1.) First thing i did was to unlock all characters

2.), I loaded up 'UT3editor through another tool, and extracted the meshes I required.

3.)Imported the meshes into 3dsmax, and kitbashed them together with parts from the UT2004 XAN Model. Head, Hands, Part of the torso.

4.) This is where it got sorta confusing for me. So i studied the Character part files, Arms, Torso, Helmets, Thighs, etc. and switched on the Skeletal rig. it appears that the full Character rig is used for each character part. So back in 3dsmax I opened the UT2004 character rig and rigged each part individually.so add only arms to the rig, export it out as PSk. then delete it from the rig, Rigged the head, export out, Delete, so on and so on, until all parts were rigged to the skeleton. then imported all PSKs into UT3Editor

5.) Once they were in a new package, with the same nametypes as the corrupt parts. (Each part ending in 05.) I slapped some textures on it(dont really care at the moment) and saved it.

6.) Went through the CustomChar.ini file for all the parts and copied pasted them into the same section. changed the file paths to look for my files, Changed all part IDs to E. (E being 05.) Changed the name of the character to Xan, and saved.

Ran the game, and it appeared in the list with all parts swapable with standard UT3 parts. only the head cannot be changed.

something tells me that this is just "oh look I can do it and wont tell" sort of thing. but after 2days of trial and error Im led to believe that its a scam. there is nothing what can extract meshes from *.UPK. I wasnt even successful with extracting textures the UEd way (duplicate packages, etc....). so if it is really true, and something is able to tap into the .upks Id like to know... thx

[EvilEngine]

something tells me that this is just "oh look I can do it and wont tell" sort of thing. but after 2days of trial and error Im led to believe that its a scam. there is nothing what can extract meshes from *.UPK. I wasnt even successful with extracting textures the UEd way (duplicate packages, etc....). so if it is really true, and something is able to tap into the .upks Id like to know... thx

Extracting the models is VERY easy with the right tools. I won't tell you which apps that tap into your GPU's functions to pull out the geometry, but all you have to do is google around and you will find more than one that do the same job. Not perfectly though, some you have to manually change some things but any geometry from ANY game can be pulled out and copied to the harddrive.

http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/7528/clipboard01el6.th.jpg (http://img89.imageshack.us/my.php?image=clipboard01el6.jpg)

[EvilEngine]

Ugh, sorry double post. :(

[COGG1138]

thanks for a quick reply. image is very persuading. but I still got nowhere with that hint :( did you get the texture this way as well?
when its legal stuff/forum rules violation/etc in question, please PM me (or try owson@centrum.sk).... if its only hide and seek, then its not for me.

[NiMiTz998]

i wanna have alma from F.E.A.R in ut3 that would be so badass

[Super Dante]

It would be intresting to see a UT3 model in UT2004...lol