MD3 to Unreal

[DarkinMan]

Hi,

It's not really an issue, but rather an help request.

I'd like to export the head's model, but when I import the result file into my game engine, the model is splitted into 4 parts ("Teeth", "Eye01", "Eye02", "Head"), and here's the issue. First, it miss the "Tag_Mouth" part, and second, in the game engine, for some reasons, animations aren't working anymore, nothing is moving, even if I manually link the animations to their assigned skeleton parts.

I only have basic knowledges about 3D Modelling, so unfortunatly, I can't find any fix for that.

Thanks in advance for the help you could provide me.

[mino-git]

Hi, what happens if you export and then immediately import into blender again. Are animations and tags preserved? And which game engine are you using?

[DarkinMan]

So, the tags are here, but the animations aren't working. I can see the animation data on the timeline, but nothing's moving. And I'm using Unreal Engine 4.

[mino-git]

Again, please be precise, otherwise i can't help.

Answer this question: "Hi, what happens if you export and then immediately import into blender again."

[DarkinMan]

No, I mean in Blender. I did exactly what you said, and this is the result I have, into blender.

[mino-git]

Correct me if i am wrong. So you say the animations are not working in blender after you export from blender (to .md3), and then import that exported file into blender again. Cause that would mean something is wrong with the import export script.

As for unreal: it natively supports .obj and .fbx files. Make sure to export to .fbx from blender (not .obj), and animations and tags should be imported there too. EDIT this is because .obj does not support animation and tag objects.

[mino-git]

Also, you might join our discord if you want: https://discord.gg/uQ3cGm97 Lots of unreal users there.

[DarkinMan]

I'll explain you the process I followed :

1- Start a new scene in blender, removing base light, camera, and cube
2- Import via your plugin the Head.md3 file (with working animations at this point)
3- Apply the shading of the skinfile I want (I did with axis_soldier.skin)
4- Export the scene as "Axis Soldier Animated Head.fbx", with "Bake Animations" ticked (Same settings than what I did for the bodies, which are working perfectly).
5- Import this fbx into both UE4 or Blender
6- Animations are not working anymore, even if I can see that the animation data is still present.
7- (Only on UE4): "Head", "Teeth", "Eye01", and "Eye02" are now splitted into different files, with their own animation sequences (but not moving anything on the mesh they're attached to).

I joined the Discord server as Darkin Man#9707, if it's easier / fatser for you to talk with me

[mino-git]

Hey there, now i see and you are right, i get the same results.

For background info: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/animation/shape_keys/introduction.html

My importer for .md3 uses "absolute shape keys" for animation. After the import you should see all animations and tags correct. But when using the blender .fbx exporter (or other exporters like collada) the result is indeed no animations. I tried different options, but nothing worked. It seems the blender exporters simply do not read these kind of information.

Since i am interested in this too i leave this open. idTech 3 to Unreal workflow is kind of important to me too. Maybe if someone else got a solution i am all ear. Maybe if you convert the absolute shape keys to relative shape keys it could trigger blenders exporters to finally read out the animation data.

Again, thanks for the report and maybe a solution will pop up sometime :)

[mino-git]

Also if you don't mind, i renamed the issue to "MD3 to Unreal".

[DarkinMan]

I'm thinking about it since a few hours now, and I was wondering. Is there any way to simply split the .md3 to seperate mdm/mdx files and then import them the same way as the body, which seems to work fine ?

[gzmuszynski]

I see I wasn't the only one with the idea. did it went anywhere?

[DarkinMan]

Nothing came up since that, sorry :/

[mino-git]

Yeah, unfortunately no solution.

A good starting point may be animation info the .fbx exporters read.

As far as i remember the discussion on discord, we tried figuring out how to convert shape key information (animation info) into something the standard exporters of blenders read and export to.