Anyone want to re-rig some character models?

I have the UE4 tool for rigging character models and doing animations, and it'd be cool to re-rig the character models and redo some of the animation stuff. I'm ass at anything like this, so if there was someone who'd want to poke about and get it working, that'd be awesome.

Here are all the models I've done work to to get working in other game engines: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B5prZNxOmeijSVA1VDFqZ2dObkU&usp=sharing

 

I can have a look at that. Rigging is actually not THAT hard.

 

fucking get some swim animations!!!

 

And then switch them with the walking/running animations. Please.

Walk through water, swim on land.

 

You have Maya right?

 

I use Blender, but it can handle .fbx just fine.

 

the ue4 plugin is for maya. It does most of the work for you.

 

I bet there is also one for 3DS Max. For some reason Maya is seen as THE rigging and animation suite. No idea why, never really tried it.
But I am happy with the amount of control Blender gives me, so yeah. Shouldn't be such a big deal.

You just simply want .fbx back, right?

 

For some reason those are the first .fbx files that blenderfbx importer can't open. They aren't empty, I've looked into them, but nothing shows up on import.

But seeing they were created with the Blender .fbx exporter, you could just give me the .blend files.

 

I don't have .blend files. I imported the SMDs and exported them as fbx

 

What does your blender console say, firewarrior?

 

Actually...nothing at all...that's weird.
I used this plugin to import the .fbx files: http://blenderfbx.render.jp/
But then again, I only tried it on this deprecated machine at work. Could be that I get vastly different results at home.
In any case it doesn't really matter, because I can access the .smd files myself, so no worries.

//EDIT
Oh wait, I was stupid. I forgot to install umconv on this machine. Yeah, works now.
Thing just is that won't really do me any good. The thing as it is now is pretty broken. The mesh's up axis is -Y and the armature's up axis is +Z. And half the bones are parented to the root bone.
I guess I could rebuild it from scratch, since we wanted to do that anyway.

 

Would you re-rig them? Also make them X+ forward? I never could get that working for some reason. I'm a coder, not a modeller

 

+X?! Why would you even...? Oh wait you mean forward...
Well usually it is:
+Z -> Up
-Y -> Forward
At least that is Blender default and most engines use the same principle.

 

Sorry, it looks like Z+ for UE4. I'm bad at this stuff

 

You mean +Z is the up axis, right? Could you tell me which one the forward axis is? If it really is +X and I build it with -Y as forward, the model might end up turned 90°.

 

I cannot find a 100% solid statement. Some people say X+ is forward, Some say Y+. Atleast everyone agrees that Z+ is up...

It appears X+ is indeed forward.

 

Alright then. I think after a re rig, the easiest way to test it would probably be a ragdoll.

 

Urgh, I just found out another problem:
Blender uses a right hand coordinate system with +Z as up and -Y as front.
Unreal 4 uses a left hand coordinate system with +Z as up and +Y as front.
+X is in both cases the left side.

I guess it should be fine, if just set everything right in the export. Otherwise I will have to mirror along the Y axis.

Unreal uses 1cm as unit and Source used 1ft as it's unit. Now I even have the fun of scaling it correctly, yay! >.<
Also the fuck Source:

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Dimensions

 

Alright ladies and gents. I was a bit bored at work, so I finished up a skeleton and skinned it to Engineer "Ed".


I uploaded two .fbx exports of him, both made with different exporters respectively.
Blender Native FBX export
BOS / FBX export

I think the first one probably has a higher chance to work. I was able to set the coordinate axes just like in Unreal 4. You should be able to make a ragdoll out of it and test it like in the video I linked earlier.