[Solved] Editing Models and Animations in Blender

[ShaneRoach]

I'm going to explain what I have tried below, but my basic question is, does anyone know precisely what to load and where to edit Red Eclipse models in Blender?

My quest so far:

So I got the old version of Blender that is supposed to support importing md5 (Blender 2.61). I installed the python scripts that are supposed to convert md5 format meshes and anims. They do, at the very least, allow me to see md5 files as something that can be imported, but when I import them nothing appears to happen.

I am looking in Red Eclipse's data files and not seeing md5 meshes except for one for the HUD view. I am seeing a few md5anim files, a lot of the newer iqm files, and actually a number of blend files.

The default male model appears to be /data/actors/player/male/RE_Player.blend. At least, that's the one that is in the old pose you always see a generic model assume before they add armature. But there's no armature. There's an RE_Player_male.blend, RE_Player_male2.blend and even an RE_Player_male.iqm.....

I had thought that once you actually added a bone that there should be selection boxes in Blender to SEE them. RE_Player_male2.blend in particular has an animation of sorts with what looks like some rigging, but ... without bones? Opens straight to a dope sheet. Play it and it sort of flails around like it is performing the default unarmed punch.

Anyhow, if anyone is familiar with this aspect of things and can nudge me in the general direction of the next step, I would appreciate it. Am I just not realizing there is an entirely different way to animate without using an armature? Is that pretty much the only way to animate for Red Eclipse?

Even with what I had begun to think was a reasonably good understanding of Blender, I can't even really begin to quite grasp what I am supposed to do to get Red Eclipse's stuff in an editable form.

Hehe. P.S. I imported hud_hands.md5mesh and it is visible as the most amazing little jumble of crap. The Object Data and Bones options are visible as I had thought was supposed to happen if you had some bones. So it's definitely importing SOMETHING.

[Iceflower]

[ShaneRoach]

Thanks IceFlower.

The link also has some instructions about connecting the mesh to the animation correctly. I will install that thing post haste. But one of the main problems I am having REALLY is I don't know where the models the game engine itself actually uses are. I don't understand where the game engine looks for a mesh, where it looks for an animation, and how it connects the two and sprays them on the screen.

In other words, I need to know what mesh to connect to what animation. What do I import together to make one complete thing to work on? Are we actually using .blend meshes IN the game? What are they doing in the Red Eclipse data folder if not?

[blakthunder]

[ShaneRoach]

Thanks, Blackthunder. I think I see my issue. players are all basically the drone, aren't they? mesh.md5mesh in the drone directory?

What do you mean by being in the installation directory? I only see models in data.

The jumble that turned out when I loaded the hud hands is all of the bones being outsized compared to the model. Same happenes when I load mesh.md5mesh. But there's just enough of the model visible that I can tell it looks like the usual player. Just need to fiddle with the bone sizes somehow.

Does that explain it? Or am I off in the weeds again?

P.S. IceFlower, Nemyax's blender importer works in 2.77, which is nice. I can nuke that old install now.

[SniperGoth]

[ShaneRoach]

[bonifarz]

[SniperGoth]

[ShaneRoach]

There's definitely a little iqm there in the player folder, and iqm's can combine mesh and animation into one file according to their main page on Sauerbraten. http://sauerbraten.org/iqm/

It looks for all the world like you can import md5's and export iqm's but you can't get the finished iqm back into Blender. If I am wrong, please feel free to let me know. There are .blend files available for the meshes of the players, and the mesh for the drone is still in md5, which can be imported into Blender, but there are no iqm import schemes. I think the idea was that since there are so few models anyhow, there's no point re-importing them into Blender. If anyone wants to produce other models for this game, going forward it would be a Very Good Idea(tm) to keep the .blend files around. I was looking into all of this out of curiosity as to how to make new animations for the character model.

I'm going to proceed on this assumption that there is no iqm importation work flow. Probably a good practice exercise for me anyhow would be putting the bones into the mesh for the player models anyhow. It might even be a good idea for me to practice by redoing the model It sure has a wild mesh compared to how they turn out in modern .blend meshes, at least in my (admittedly very inexperienced) opinion.

As always, thanks for the help.

[Dziq]

this really sucks that Blender iqm only have exporter and import feature is missing so long.. that way a iqm is not complete..
I'm trying to make a simple door for RE, and again - tutorial how to set up an animations and how to export them for.iqm is missing, this is supposed to be replacement of .md5 ?? :/ For now, as for me, it's better to create my door as .md5 since animation+mesh export is documented for this format, unlike iqm. But someone must have a knowledge how to export iqm anims to RE, since player models are all as iqm..

[SniperGoth]

Iqm's are setup the same way as md5's, as far as i know.

[ShaneRoach]

[Dziq]

[blakthunder]

[ShaneRoach]