About animating costum character

[andrea_at]

Hi all,

I modeled a character in Blender and it has 6 parts, i imported it to UDK and in the AnimSet Editor, i can only open 4 parts of my character, as external meshes. I have noticed that when i try the animations of a male UDK charater, it appears as a single mesh, how can i do that? If that character it is supposed to be made also in 6 parts, why it appears as it had one? Im very confused about it, please anyone could explain it to me? Thanks,

Andrea

[andrea_at]

Ok,

I read the UDN tutorial about Configuring the Mesh for Use In-Game of the UT3 custom characters. I have installed the Unreal Development Kit (UDK 2010-03 version) on my laptop, but i cant find the following folder:
\My Documents\My Games\Unreal Tournament 3\UTGame\Config\UTCustomChar.ini, where im supposed to add lines of code representing all the parts of my custom character made in Blender. Do i have to create that folder or does it already exists?

I also have another question, as i have 2 uv mapping images, one for the body and the other for the head, how all the textures of the characters that i've seen comes into one single targa image? Can i put all the uv maps of the head, for example, without touching the spaces where some specific body pieces must be?

If i have my character as one single mesh and with the UDK skeleton, will it work properly inside the UDK with the animations? Why does it have to be separated in 5 or 6 pieces?

I know, i have lots of doubts. Perhaps someone could help me... Thanks in advance

Andrea

[JGrady997]

Hello i can try to help solve some of your troubles, but i am limited in my helping ability since i am an adventurer in the world of 3d studio max

First of all your character doesnt have to be in pieces, i initially thought that but its easier to work with one whole model - i know its going to be some work but try to attach all pieces together. Once you do that, you will also have to attach a skeleton to your model so that it can move with the skeleton. To get one, i suggest getting a UT3_Male or Female skeleton. 3ds max has skin modifier and physique modifier for this bonding task but i dont know about blender. Once you have "bonded" your model with a skeleton make sure it faces down the positive x-axis and you should be good to export. Exporting is done via ActorX plugin

I haven't done much with the UV mapping so far in my project so i dont think i can help there (since all i did was use a simple UWV unwrap and basically applied the same 1 texture image to every face of my model that was within a box). I wouldn't worry about the appearance of your model until you actually have it working well as a custom character so start simple.

Finally, for your coding troubles on making the game recognize your character i suggest Fishi's tutorial here on the forums - its an outstanding tutorial, big thread and people post on it pretty often try checking it out (will post link)

[JGrady997]

Fishi's tutorial:

http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=717339

[andrea_at]

Thanks a lot JGrady997,

I changed my character, i did it as a single mesh, imported the textures in one single 2D image and it worked! Now im having problems, maybe with skinning? When i import my model, i got distortions, as i mentionned in other posts. Ill figure it out... Bye!

Andrea