I am having trouble setting the start times for animations in a custom model. If you view an m3 model in the cutscene editor and go to Window->Model Data, you can see all of the animation sequences. Each animation sequence has a start time and a length. As far as I know, all of the native SC2 models have start times of 0. My custom model, however, uses nonzero start times. Unfortunately, these appear to be ignored in-game.
For example, the first part of my animation is a stand animation, and the second part is a walk. So if my unit is standing, the animation plays correctly. However, if my unit is walking, the entire stand animation plays once before each walk animation, as if the start time for the walk animation was also zero. Interestingly, the animations do end when they are supposed to; that is, they loop back at start time + length, not at 0 + length, which seems to suggest that the game actually stores a start time and an end time, not a start time and a length.
Ultimately, I will probably modify the animations themselves so that they have start times of 0, but I'd like to know if anyone else has experienced this problem or knows of a fix.
I suspect that this does essentially the same thing as Animation Baseline Start. It turns out that all of these actor events have corresponding scripts (which just call ActorSend with a certain string), and those are documented here on sc2mapster. I'm not sure yet if I prefer doing things via the data editor or scripts, but it's nice to test things out with both.
Edit: The XML files (Core.SC2Mod and Liberty.SC2Mod) for actors are good places to see how the events are set up. The reason animations don't play by default is that GenericUnitStandard and its parents don't have "AnimBaselineStart" or "AnimBracketStart BSD Birth Stand Death" on ActorCreation.
I am currently having trouble getting basic animations like "Stand" and "Walk" working. The animations are definitely in my custom m3 model, as shown if I just create a model through the script:
Which shows the coin spinning according to its Stand animation. However, if I create a coin unit, it does not show any animations. A few days ago I actually had a working unit with the stand animation, so it can't be too hard, but I can't figure out how I did it...
Edit: Reloaded the map, and it worked... this is not the first time that reloading the map editor is enough to make something work.
Edit 2: Made a few more minor changes, and now the animations no longer work. I think I'm missing something trivial, or there is some inconsistent SC2.
Edit 3: I can get the Stand animation to work consistently using the script:
ActorSend(myUnitActor, "AnimBaselineStart")
where myUnitActor is the main actor of the unit I created.
I assume that by modifiers you mean the Object Modifiers tab with the wrench? There doesn't appear to be anything there. And I did export in Object Mode. Interestingly, re-importing the m3 file showed the geometry perfectly intact.
As for automating the conversion, I was already planning on writing the code myself if it turned out that the m3addon didn't already have the functionality. Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with either blender or the code for your m3addon, so some pointers for getting started would be very much appreciated.
Ok, I think I understand that. But if want to import a model from another format, I only have existing Blender materials. Is there some systematic way of converting these into m3 materials? So far, I have tried the following:
Create an m3 material for each Blender material.
Set the diffuse image path of the m3 material to that of its corresponding Blender material.
Set the M3 Material of each Blender material to its corresponding m3 material.
So far, exactly one of my 4 meshes has its texture rendered properly in SC2. I'll continue trying to manually adjust the m3 materials... But it really seems to me that converting Blender materials to m3 materials is something that the m3addon should do automatically.
Edit: Well, after doing the same thing over and over, I finally figured out the problem... the SC2 editor needed to be restarted. Now give me a moment to bang my head against a hard object one more time.
Okay! So doing the above 3 steps does indeed work. However, now that I can actually see the textures of my model in the SC2 editor, I can see that the geometry itself is messed up. Many of the vertices are simply in the wrong places, as if the actual wires of the wireframe were randomly bent.
So when I import an m3 (or any file) I have to set up all of the materials and textures manually? I'm not even sure how to do this for the coin model (save recreating the texture entirely), let alone for existing models which might have complicated material/texture information.
I personally still use Andromeda. Hopefully gex will get around to fixing the code base so that development and maintenance can continue. At the moment, though, it is perfectly usable. Unfortunately, the forums on sc2mod.com are down, so there isn't a good documentation anywhere. Perhaps I should repost the main documentation here.
My main problem was linking the model, unit, and actor. I figured out that you do both of these in the actor: modify its model art, and its unit name (this field is separate from the others). I'll still have to tinker with the other fields of the unit and actor to get things like movement (for some reason, the move button doesn't show up in the command card even though I've set all the fields).
I'd like to create a unit from scratch using the data editor. I believe that the bare minimum I need is to create a Unit, an Actor (of type Unit), and a Model, and assign the Model to the Actor and the Actor to the Unit. I can create the model (and give it my custom m3 file), and know how to create Units and Actors, but am not sure how to assign these. Any ideas?
I am currently trying to convert a model (originally in collada format) to m3 using the blender m3addon. In order to do this, I need to create m3 materials. My question is: should I try to duplicate the existing materials for each mesh (as new m3 materials), or is there some way to link an m3 material to an already existing material? I'd prefer the second option, since the existing materials in my model have existing properties which I don't really understand.
I also have a textures question: when I export the coin as m3, should I be able to import it back and have the textures appear? When I try to import coin.m3 back into blender, the texture no longer appears.
0
I am having trouble setting the start times for animations in a custom model. If you view an m3 model in the cutscene editor and go to Window->Model Data, you can see all of the animation sequences. Each animation sequence has a start time and a length. As far as I know, all of the native SC2 models have start times of 0. My custom model, however, uses nonzero start times. Unfortunately, these appear to be ignored in-game.
For example, the first part of my animation is a stand animation, and the second part is a walk. So if my unit is standing, the animation plays correctly. However, if my unit is walking, the entire stand animation plays once before each walk animation, as if the start time for the walk animation was also zero. Interestingly, the animations do end when they are supposed to; that is, they loop back at start time + length, not at 0 + length, which seems to suggest that the game actually stores a start time and an end time, not a start time and a length.
Ultimately, I will probably modify the animations themselves so that they have start times of 0, but I'd like to know if anyone else has experienced this problem or knows of a fix.
0
So I've tried setting up the BSD actor event, but my unit still doesn't switch to its walking animation when moving...
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I suspect that this does essentially the same thing as Animation Baseline Start. It turns out that all of these actor events have corresponding scripts (which just call ActorSend with a certain string), and those are documented here on sc2mapster. I'm not sure yet if I prefer doing things via the data editor or scripts, but it's nice to test things out with both.
Edit: The XML files (Core.SC2Mod and Liberty.SC2Mod) for actors are good places to see how the events are set up. The reason animations don't play by default is that GenericUnitStandard and its parents don't have "AnimBaselineStart" or "AnimBracketStart BSD Birth Stand Death" on ActorCreation.
0
Not sure what the "BSD" animation is. Also, I do have the UnitBirth => Create Actor Event.
0
I am currently having trouble getting basic animations like "Stand" and "Walk" working. The animations are definitely in my custom m3 model, as shown if I just create a model through the script:
ActorCreate(null, "TriggerModel", "Coin", null, null);
Which shows the coin spinning according to its Stand animation. However, if I create a coin unit, it does not show any animations. A few days ago I actually had a working unit with the stand animation, so it can't be too hard, but I can't figure out how I did it...
Edit: Reloaded the map, and it worked... this is not the first time that reloading the map editor is enough to make something work.
Edit 2: Made a few more minor changes, and now the animations no longer work. I think I'm missing something trivial, or there is some inconsistent SC2.
Edit 3: I can get the Stand animation to work consistently using the script:
ActorSend(myUnitActor, "AnimBaselineStart")
where myUnitActor is the main actor of the unit I created.
0
@println: Go
I assume that by modifiers you mean the Object Modifiers tab with the wrench? There doesn't appear to be anything there. And I did export in Object Mode. Interestingly, re-importing the m3 file showed the geometry perfectly intact.
As for automating the conversion, I was already planning on writing the code myself if it turned out that the m3addon didn't already have the functionality. Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with either blender or the code for your m3addon, so some pointers for getting started would be very much appreciated.
0
Ok, I think I understand that. But if want to import a model from another format, I only have existing Blender materials. Is there some systematic way of converting these into m3 materials? So far, I have tried the following:
So far, exactly one of my 4 meshes has its texture rendered properly in SC2. I'll continue trying to manually adjust the m3 materials... But it really seems to me that converting Blender materials to m3 materials is something that the m3addon should do automatically.
Edit: Well, after doing the same thing over and over, I finally figured out the problem... the SC2 editor needed to be restarted. Now give me a moment to bang my head against a hard object one more time.
Okay! So doing the above 3 steps does indeed work. However, now that I can actually see the textures of my model in the SC2 editor, I can see that the geometry itself is messed up. Many of the vertices are simply in the wrong places, as if the actual wires of the wireframe were randomly bent.
0
@println: Go
So when I import an m3 (or any file) I have to set up all of the materials and textures manually? I'm not even sure how to do this for the coin model (save recreating the texture entirely), let alone for existing models which might have complicated material/texture information.
0
Worked! Thanks for the tip! And I didn't have to modify any actor events, they all appeared automatically...
0
I personally still use Andromeda. Hopefully gex will get around to fixing the code base so that development and maintenance can continue. At the moment, though, it is perfectly usable. Unfortunately, the forums on sc2mod.com are down, so there isn't a good documentation anywhere. Perhaps I should repost the main documentation here.
0
My main problem was linking the model, unit, and actor. I figured out that you do both of these in the actor: modify its model art, and its unit name (this field is separate from the others). I'll still have to tinker with the other fields of the unit and actor to get things like movement (for some reason, the move button doesn't show up in the command card even though I've set all the fields).
0
I'd like to create a unit from scratch using the data editor. I believe that the bare minimum I need is to create a Unit, an Actor (of type Unit), and a Model, and assign the Model to the Actor and the Actor to the Unit. I can create the model (and give it my custom m3 file), and know how to create Units and Actors, but am not sure how to assign these. Any ideas?
0
I am currently trying to convert a model (originally in collada format) to m3 using the blender m3addon. In order to do this, I need to create m3 materials. My question is: should I try to duplicate the existing materials for each mesh (as new m3 materials), or is there some way to link an m3 material to an already existing material? I'd prefer the second option, since the existing materials in my model have existing properties which I don't really understand.
0
I also have a textures question: when I export the coin as m3, should I be able to import it back and have the textures appear? When I try to import coin.m3 back into blender, the texture no longer appears.
0
I don't see how this is better than Andromeda...