Any 'rules' for editing rigs from the game?

[EPDGaffney]

So, I've been editing some models from the game, and I've realised that they are frequently made in ways that I wouldn't have done, and I'm wondering how much of that can I change without causing weird problems in the engine.

 

Good example here is that I've been editing a tunneller, from Lonesome Road. Well, turns out that pretty much anywhere I would have simply marked a UV seam, they've actually split the edge. One of the many things I've been doing is fattening up this tunneller a bit, and every time I do something related to that, the edges split visibly and the model has a hole. Can I just merge the vertices the way I would do in my own game's models, or does the engine use any of the data on individual vertices for anything?

 

And yes, reclosing the hole is easy enough but it's becoming tedious to do it constantly. Another problem is that occasionally the rig deforms the model such that a few verts separate. Obviously, if I just merged these vertices, the problem would go away.

 

Also, can I quad these meshes for ease of editing and re-triangulate them, or again, is that something that would muck up the model's functionality in the engine.

 

If it wasn't clear, the plan is to use the tunneller's animations and skeleton but to alter the model significantly. I have a good deal of experience doing this in modern engines, but not in Gamebryo, where they have dismemberment and modularity and all that, so I'm trying not to break anything.

 

Thank you.

Edited November 2, 2017 by EPDGaffney

[uhmattbravo]

The only problems I've run into doing similar is sometimes you'll get unwanted (for lack of a better term, I'll call them) creases, but you can usually spot them (in blender, at least) in object mode viewing it as solid. I honestly don't know what causes it, and someone with more modeling experience than me might be able to fix it if it happens. Really, the best advice I could give would be to save the project, try it, and revert to that save if anything goes wrong that can't easily be fixed.

[EPDGaffney]

Thanks a million. I've basically finished at the moment but I'm sure I'll have more chances to deal with this again.

 

The creases are probably because you need to set them to smooth shade/soft edges (as opposed to flat/hard), but they could additionally be either from the textures not matching up perfectly (which they don't anyway, at least on the tunneller), or the normal map. If it's one of the texture problems I mentioned, it's very easy to fix by either hiding the seams better or painting the texture in Blender. You use the clone brush and paint over the seams. It outputs a new texture file that reflects these changes. I've had trouble in Blender getting the normal map to paint, but it works.