Badger Playable Character *Download Available*

[JavaLodge]

Hello everyone!
I'm very new to the forums, but I would like to say how great it feels to be a part of this great game. I'd like to present you with a brand new playable character that I've been slaving over even before I had Overgrowth. As you can see from the screenshots he is far from finished. However today I had some success in actually being able to play as him and I needed to jump on the chance to get some screenshots.

I would be very grateful if someone could help me with the obvious problems I'm having with the model. I know we have some veteran modders here. In particular I am having trouble with the .phxbn exporting. I'm using Blender 2.55 beta and it only seems to work properly 1 in 10 times. Also the automatic bone weighting only works on and off as well. I have a normal map and I will put that in later using X-normals but for now I'm using a blank placeholder normal map. Enjoy!

-Java

[Korban3]

This is bittersweet, because you originally asked me to see if I could get him working and I had to bail on you ;-;
But you got it working, which is great

Anyways, it seems like the ear bones have too much weighted for them. You need to have one vertex for each bone as a minimum, so I would remove all but one vertex for each ear.
You can either use Pose Mode in the Skeleton and then select the mesh and go into weight paint mode and use that.
Or, you can modify the DEF_'bone' vertex groups.
Either way has been shown to work.

Other than that, it looks like you just need to go through and clean up the weighting in general, as auto weights doesn't always do a clean and cut job of it.

[JavaLodge]

Progress!
As you can see the weight painting is a sight better, and I've gotten a lot better at the whole exporting process. I didn't actually know that every bone had to control at least one vertex, so thanks for that tip Korban3.

As you can see, the texture is still a little unfinished (the eyes) and the normal map is nonexistant. I have a normal map and it is in object space but it looks uuugly when I apply it. Blender must use different coordinates than Overgrowth. I downloaded xnormal but I am really unfamiliar. Can I use it to convert my normal map to a correct one? Thanks!

The badger has the same capabilities as the wolf.

A little parkour for fun.

Thanks for reading!

-Java

[CJAwesome]

Can't wait until he's finished

[Black_Stormy]

iirc blender bakes its object space maps with -z being up. I think phoenix likes -y being up, so maybe you could rotate your model in blender (in edit mode) then bake it and see how that goes. (try "r x -90" or maybe "r x 180")

[Endoperez]

iirc blender bakes its object space maps with -z being up. I think phoenix likes -y being up, so maybe you could rotate your model in blender (in edit mode) then bake it and see how that goes. (try "r x -90" or maybe "r x 180")

I think it's even easier than that. I've fixed normalmaps by simply inverting the Blue channel in Photoshop.

So I guess Blender bakes stuff with -Z or Z being blue, and Overgrowth uses the map with -Y or Y or something being blue.... The fact that the axis is different doesn't actually matter in this case, since the letters are just two ways of saying "up".


However, remember that the character also has to be facing the right way in Blender, when you (JavaLodge) bake the normals. Since you're rigging him and I assume the rig is facing the right way, that shouldn't be a problem.

[JavaLodge]

Thanks for the tips everyone. I've gotten a step closer, but it's still not there yet. I've been working on the normal map a lot and this is what I've run into.

The normal map seems to work properly when his back is facing the light...

but when his front faces the light source it's not lit right. Also, I am not sure if the black seams are from the color map or the normal map. They both have the same UV coordinates so I'm not sure what the problem is there.

Once I get the normal map right I will probably work more on the rigging and then release him!

-Java

[Black_Stormy]

Looks to me like a) your seams are bleeding past the edge of the normal map and/or b) you have black or alpha areas on your normal map. If you do have black areas on your normal map get rid of them. You can do this dodgily: Duplicate your normal map to a separate layer, smudge or blur the hell out of it till there is no black, and then put the original back on top and delete all the black areas. This means that if you get seam bleeding (like it looks like you are getting) it won't be very noticeable.

Of course a proper solution would be finding out exactly why your normal map baked like that and fixing that problem but that's not something I can explain in a message. I know blender has an option in the bake dialogue called "margin". Try upping that to 20 or so, it extrapolates the baked colours past the edges of the UV co ordinates so you don't get as much bleeding.

Strange that it's so pronounced though, I guess Phoenix doesn't prioritize normal map UV accuracy.

[Endoperez]

Are you sure he's facing the right way in Blender? Try importing a rabbit character mesh in and make sure that your badger is facing the same way.


Another thing that might fix it could also cause some very nasty problems with rigging and other stuff, so save this one into a different file with a different name. Use Ctrl+A to Apply Rotation and Scale, and then try baking again. The rotation and scale might not be the defaults, and Blender might screw up due to that.

[Black_Stormy]

Yeah you also have the normals inverted on the y and z axis, which would be why he lights from the back. You could try inverting each individual channel in the normal and see what happens - there's only three so it shouldn't take long. Actually I don't know if that's how an object space normal works.

Try it anyway, and report with pics.

[akazi]

Yeah you also have the normals inverted on the y and z axis, which would be why he lights from the back. You could try inverting each individual channel in the normal and see what happens - there's only three so it shouldn't take long. Actually I don't know if that's how an object space normal works.

Try it anyway, and report with pics.

Are you still going to work on you're bear character now that people are starting to get their own playable characters in-game?

[Black_Stormy]

Well it's Andriges and he already has it working in game, but he's going to add some pro animations to it before it's released. Unfortunately we couldn't get the custom rig working since the engine relies on certain IK chains being present, and I have no way of finding out what they are, so it's rigged to the wolf rig as a base.

I don't really have any more work I can do to it and Andrige is busy like a fly in a septic tank so there is still a bit of time between now and a release methinks.

[akazi]

Well it's Andriges and he already has it working in game, but he's going to add some pro animations to it before it's released. Unfortunately we couldn't get the custom rig working since the engine relies on certain IK chains being present, and I have no way of finding out what they are, so it's rigged to the wolf rig as a base.

I don't really have any more work I can do to it and Andrige is busy like a fly in a septic tank so there is still a bit of time between now and a release methinks.

Ah yes that's right, it was Andrige's I forgot. Can't wait to read more progress of the character later on.

[Korban3]

Couldn't you reverse engineer the IK chains from the wolf rig? I know I was able to add a new IK chain to a character by repeating what was done on the wolf's tail.

[Black_Stormy]

Probably could really, but I decided it would be better to wait until David adds some more support for custom characters. I guess it would be great if we could have a more holistic vision of what a custom rig takes though.