The Witcher 1 armors in DA: origins

[acateatsarat]

thanks amycus so much and I'll be waiting for your tutorial, also in the skin modifier which I pasted from the DA model, when I turned off "always deform" which is in the advanced parameters roll-out, the model became normal and fit into the skeleton :)

 

but the problem now is that in the toolset when I create a cutscene to test the armor (because I don't know how to add it to the game yet unfortunately) in the cutscene when I select the character wearing the armor and move the cursor over the cutscene panel, the character appears normally, but when I click on the cutscene to place it in it, the character becomes invisible, it's there but it's just invisible, all the character including the head morph along with the armor become invisible, so what should I do to solve this problem?

[amycus]

thanks amycus so much and I'll be waiting for your tutorial, also in the skin modifier which I pasted from the DA model, when I turned off "always deform" which is in the advanced parameters roll-out, the model became normal and fit into the skeleton :)

 

Good to see you get it working :yes:

 

but the problem now is that in the toolset when I create a cutscene to test the armor (because I don't know how to add it to the game yet unfortunately) in the cutscene when I select the character wearing the armor and move the cursor over the cutscene panel, the character appears normally, but when I click on the cutscene to place it in it, the character becomes invisible, it's there but it's just invisible, all the character including the head morph along with the armor become invisible, so what should I do to solve this problem?

 

I have never tried to create any cutscenes yet, but you can see how to get the armor in game here:

 

 

Also, you can test how it moves while you still are in 3ds max. Either by using eshmes tools to import an animation, or simply select one of the bones in the skeleton, then move it. The mesh should follow. Just remember to use "step backward" to return the skeleton to its origianl pose before you save or export it.

Edited August 25, 2011 by amycus

[acateatsarat]

Here's a photo showing the problem in more details

 

http://i1088.photobucket.com/albums/i339/acateatsarat/test.jpg

 

the problem is that the character is already there but for some reason it's invisible :blink:

[amycus]

after you have exported it, try to import it immediately again to see what it looks like. I suspect that you didn't get the GOB set up properly. It's eiterh that, or there is sometging wrong with the .gda

 

I would also forget about the cutscene editor in the meantime and first add it to the game by the same method as in the vid. It's easier to see mistakes in the weightpainting that way (I have a feeling that his shoulders will need some quick fixing later)

Edited August 25, 2011 by amycus

[amycus]

AAH, sorry, I complely forgot about this thread. It is past 27th now, so I have time to help you whichever way you want. I actually remembered that I still had the meshes from DA2 that I ripped with the GFF editor while I still had the game. So I can work on rigging one of those armors this afternoon and then take some pics and try to make a tutorial of it.

 

Also, how is it going otherwise? Did you find out why it was inivisible in-game? If you still have the problem you can send me the exported .msh, .mmh etc files and I will take a look at it.

 

EDIT: I think I know now why "pasting" a vanilla skin modifier didn't work for you before... It was me that forgot an important step :facepalm: Sorry, I forgot about this during my vacation when I wasn't working on anything.

 

Here is a tutorial that explains the whole process of copy-pasting the rigging, aka "dirty rigging": http://wiki.rumor.ru/index.php?title=Quick_and_dirty_rigging_in_3dsmax

 

I think that tutorial explains it better than I, but if you have any questions you are welcome to ask.

Edited August 29, 2011 by amycus

[acateatsarat]

well, I discovered that the mesh is not moving with the skeleton, I don't know why, and I'm in a need of a detailed tutorial :confused:

[amycus]

well, I discovered that the mesh is not moving with the skeleton, I don't know why, and I'm in a need of a detailed tutorial :confused:

 

All right, then I will make one detailed tutorial on it this afternoon :thumbsup: . I was planning to rig some armor myself this evening anyway.

 

Since I remembered how to do the "dirty rigging" again it isn't hard at all. (Doing "dirty rigging" won't give you a perfect result right away, but it is a huge time saver when you just need to make some smaller adjustments afterwards before it behaves just like you want it to.)

Edited August 29, 2011 by amycus

[amycus]

Alright, I will start here by adding the images I took while rigging the mage armor from DA2 that I once ripped while I was still playing that game. I will add the text that concerns each pic as time goes on (It's just so that I won't need to rewrite the whole post in case something happens. I will add some red text here in the upper part of this post when I'm finished, so you know when you should actually start reading).

EDIT: FINISHED

 

 

 

1) This tutorial assumes that you have already imported the mesh you wish to port into max, and has "eshmes tools" installed. Delete everything besides the mesh. Skeleton and everything but the mesh. Now it's time to put the texture on. Click the button "material editor" in the upper right top bar. A small window pops up with gray balls. Select any ball, and click the button "standard". Choose "dragon age material" from the pop up (if you don't see "dragon age material", then you don't have "eshmes tools" installed).

 

2) Now in the "material editor", you should see the rollouts below "Material type" and "render semantics". Since we wish to make an armor, I will choose "character" from the rollout below "material type". As for "render semantics", I usually go with "no tint, no alpha, no emmissive". There are cases where the others are more suitable, but I will get back to you later when the others should be used. Now a little further below, click on the words "texture maps" to expand that section. Here you see long rows of buttons with the word "none". Click the one specified for the diffuse map. A window pops up, choose "bitmap". Then scroll down to the extracted textures. Choose the diffuse map (that is, the coloured map). Then do the same thing for the normal and specular map respectively.

 

3) Drag the ball you were setting the textures onto, to the mesh. Now, right below the grey balls there is a row of different buttons. Hoover the mouse over each to find one named "show standard map in viewport". Now you should see the textures on the mesh. Finally, before we start the rigging, in the field that is named something like "DAO_newmat_5267", change that name to what you want the mesh files to be called later. This name should be something like "hm_arm_wita_0". HM stands for human male, ARM stands for the slot the armor is supposed to go into later, in this case the cuirass slot (if you make gloves, it should be glv instead for example. More on that later) WIT is the 3 letters that stands for your own type of mesh (what you want this to be is of course your choice though). the "A_0" should always stand right after. Now onto the next step.

 

4) I'm here using the mage champion mage armor. Now import a vanilla dragon age mesh body of the race you wish to make the armor for. Try to make it fit as close as possible in terms of size. Of course, it might still not be close in shape to the vanilla dragon mesh. The arms might not match up completely. In that case, right click your own mesh, and select "convert to" --> "convert to editable mesh" just like the pic below.

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm200/amycus89/tut4.jpg. In the upper right field, you should see the word "editable mesh". Expand the "+" sight to the left of it, and click on the word "vertex". Then try to select the vertexes in the places that needs to be corrected. Does the arms need to be moved a bit? Does the neck need to be wider? Try to fix this as much as you can.

 

5)After that, it's time for the rigging. Then decide on a vanilla mesh that you want to copy the weight paint from. This vanilla mesh should be as close to the new one you are rigging as close as possible. I have however noticed that the mesh "hm_cth_coma_0" works surprisingly well for most armors. And since this mesh is made up of a "whole" body except the head, I will only delete the head and keep everything else. If you however decide to copy the weights from a different kind of vanilla mesh, say a massive cuirass, you would make a new save and delete the gauntlets and boots as well to rig those parts later. Also, when you import the vanilla mesh, make sure that the

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm200/amycus89/tut1b.jpg

 

6) Now select the mesh and make sure that the word "editable mesh" is selected and not "vertex". In the upper right field there is a list named "modifier list". Click it, and scoll down to choose "unwrap UWV". Select this word that shows up in the upper right field, and then press the button "edit" that is a little further below (if nothing happens, click one more time). You see your Uw map. For now, just move it outside the black square that surrounds the UW map when you first enter here. Close down the UW window.

 

7) Now select the vanilla mesh you imported before. In the upper right corner you should see something like this:

"skin

unwrap UWV

Edit normals"

 

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm200/amycus89/tut2.jpg

 

8)Select "skin", and then press "edit normals" too while holding the ctrl key. Right-click and select "cut". The field should now only have the "unwrap uvw" modifier left. Ignore that one. You will see the use of these 2 modifiers later.

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm200/amycus89/tut3.jpg

 

9)Now right-click the vanilla mesh and select "convert to" --> "convert to editable mesh" just like the pic below.

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm200/amycus89/tut4.jpg

 

10)Now select the vanilla mesh, which you just recently turned into an "editable mesh". You should now have button to the right part of the menu named "attach". Click it. Then click the part(s) that makes up the new mesh that you wish to port. Each time you do this the little window below will pop up. Choose the same setting as in the pic to avoid getting the textures screwed up.

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm200/amycus89/tut6.jpg

 

11)Alright, time to make the scene more accessable. In the material editor, choose any random unused ball, and lower the opacity to 0 just like the pic below.

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm200/amycus89/tut7.jpg

 

12)Then just drag the now invisible texture/ball to each of these weird coloured capsules so they don't obstruct your view. In the end it should look like below.

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm200/amycus89/tut8.jpg

 

 

See below for the next part.

Edited September 6, 2011 by amycus

[amycus]

Sigh, since it won't allow me to attach too many pictures at once, please forgive me for double posting:

 

 

 

13)Ok, now both armors should be combined. Now go to the upper right filed again, and apply an "unwrap UWV" just like before. Hit the EDIT button to show the UW window again. Press the "+" sight next to the "unwrap UW" modifier in the upper right corner. Select "face". Select everything that is inside the black box (so if you did like I told you before, only the vanilla mesh would be selected). Then right-click the modifier "unwrap UW" and choose "collapse to". then, in the upper right press the small "+" sign to the left of the word "editable mesh". From the rollout, select "element". If you did everything right the whole vanilla mesh should be selected and nothing else. Press delete. Only your mesh will remain (if you wonder why we did all this, it is to trick the software that we are still editing the vanilla mesh", and thus pasting the earlier taken "skin" and "edit normals" modifiers will work here too).

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm200/amycus89/tut10.jpg

 

14)Now, finally, go to the upper right field and paste those two modifiers back ("skin" and "edit normals"). Now select the "skin" modifier specifically.

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm200/amycus89/tut11.jpg

 

15)If it looks something like this next, you might need to turn on the "edged faces" in the viewport (done in the upper left of the viewport). Then it should look something like...

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm200/amycus89/tut12.jpg

 

16)...This. When you select a bone in the menu to the right, the vertexes associated with that bone should light up coloured. In the pic below I have selected the right thig. As we can see the weight pain was transfered successfully.

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm200/amycus89/tut13.jpg

 

17)Click the "skin" modifier again to de-select it. Then press on any bone of the skeleton itself (NOT the mesh itself or anything else), and try to move or bend it. The mesh should follow. Since this was a dirty rigging though, some parts of the mesh might move when they shouldn't. In the example below, the right foot stretches a bit when I move the left leg (not visible in the pic, I accidentally cropped that part away apparrently). That's something we are going to fix now.

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm200/amycus89/tut14.jpg

 

18)Lets' teach you what you need to know to fix these issues, starting with the interface when you have the "skin" modifier selected. In the pic below:

1. Edit envelopes button. Should already be checked, but still, make sure that it is just in case.

2. The box for "vertices" should always be ticked. Also one thing that is useful that I forgot to mark on the pic with colour, is the box for "select elements". Just like it sounds, when you select a vertex whith this box ticked, all vertices that make up that specific elemtent will be selected at the same time. Just remember when it is on or not to avoid any surprises.

3.A window where you select each bone of the skeleton. If you select a specific bone all the vertexes associated with it will be highlighted as previously explained.

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm200/amycus89/tut15.jpg

 

19)When you scroll down on the same menu as above, you will see what's shown in the pic below, the abs. effect. If you write a number between 0.0-1.0 here while having a vertex(es) selected, these values will be assigned to them. 1.0 means that the selected vertices will follow that specific bone around 100%, 0.5 will mean that the vertex will follow the specific bone to 50% and so on. This is shown in the viewport by giving the vertexes colour as well. Warmer colours means a higher abs value, while cooler colours means a lower abs value for the vertexes on that specific bone.

 

Hard to understand? Lets give you an example. Say that we select the bone for chest1, and assign all the vertices there to the abs value of 1.0, making that part completely red. Then we select the bone simply named "chest" and select the same vertexes, and give them the abs value of 0.6. Now select the bone for chest1 again and you will notice that theses vertexes have changed their value from 1.0 to 0.4.

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm200/amycus89/tut16.jpg

 

20)Here is how to spot the badly painted areas. Select each bone one the list, one at a time, and look for vertexes that are painted in areas where they shouldn't be. Below is an example where I can see some vertexes on the front that has been wrongly assigned to the left arm bone. So I select them, and either just give them the value of 0 immediately, or, select the bone where they should be assigned and give them the abs value of 1.0 there.

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm200/amycus89/tut17.jpg

 

21)After having looked everywhere the character should be rigged. Make sure to select and move the skeleton around, so you can see if there are any more areas that needs to be corrected though. Then, finally, finished. Now just Use eshmes tools to export it. Make sure that the filenames you use ar all the same as what you named your textured "ball" from before, After the files has been exported, you can follow this vid to put the files into the actual game:

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm200/amycus89/finished.jpg

See ya :happy:

Edited September 6, 2011 by amycus

[acateatsarat]

thanks a lot for the tutorial :thumbsup:

I will wait for the information for each pic, but did you really convert the mage armor from DA2 ?! what import/export tool did you use ?

 

I hope I'm not annoying you but would you make a mod for it ? I think it'll be great,

 

thanks again :D

Edited August 30, 2011 by acateatsarat