Try to remove the addon and start Blender again. If the m3addon is still there then it is another m3addon version from a different directory.
Blender looks at least 2 directories for the addon. The version specific place I describe in my coin tutorial and the place where the addons are that come with blender are.
Can you upload a screenshot of how your "M3 Import" panel looks like? Note: It is per default not at the top. Panels can be reordered (I show that in the first part of my coin tutorial) and I did that.
About specter's visor not beeing connected: Double check that your added mesh part has a armature modifier that links to the correct armature object. Depending on how you imported the models you may have still two armature objects. Also the methods I described in my tutorial for fine tuning help also to verify that your mesh gets influenced by the right bones. Another possible mistake could have been to use real parenting to connect the mesh to a bone. That works in Blender but can't be exported. To verify that this is the case you could remove the modifer temporarly and check if that properly breaks the animation.
The redish/yellow glow come propably from some wrong color channel configuration. I recently changed/corrected how team colors / alpha channels are handled in the m3addon. In older m3addon versions you had a checkbox "alpha as team color". It turned out that the m3 files don't save a flag, but are actually allow you to specify which color channels are used. Per default it is RGB (red green blue). Thus per default the alpha channel does not get used. When you imported the models with an old m3addon version then all material layers are RGB, even if some where RGBA in the original model. So you need to switch it to RGBA for all material layers that have an alpha layer.
I extended my tutorial by two sections. You may want to check them out. It shows how you can do the steps you already did with much less effort.
I updated the m3addon to tell you the mesh object that has the invalid modfiers. That way you can search it in the outliner to fix it. The outliner has a search box at the bottom.
A single edge split modifier is allowed after the armature modifier. Actually all imported meshes have an armature and edge split modifier. The edge split modifier is used for sharp edges.
In this tutorial I show you how to attach model parts of one model to another model that is animated. For example you can attach with this method ultralisk parts to a high templar:
I recommend that you do at least the first part of my
Coin Tutorial if you haven't used my m3addon yet. For questions about the m3addon please have a look at my my m3addon FAQ first.
Important background information
Model (Mesh) aniamtions in m3 files are realized with so called bones. A bone is an invisible object that has a rotation, location and scale. Each bone influences to a certain degree a mesh (= a bunch of triangles of which each model is made). In m3 files only the bones are aniamted and they animate through their influence the mesh.
Blender can animate models also via bones. When you import an existing SC2 model you will get an animated bone strucucture called armature and one or multiple meshes that are influenced by it. The relationship between mesh objects and armature will be created for you by the importer.
When you add meshes you typically want them to move according to the existing bones. So you need to tell Blender that your added mesh should also be influenced by the armature. The quick way to do that I will show below. The slow "manual" way would be to add a Armature Modifier to the mesh object. To add the armature manually you would select the mesh object and then add add the armature modifer as shown in the following screenshot:
Since an armature has multiple bones Blender needs to know which bone affects which part of the mesh. This is done via so called vertex groups. A vertex (point of a triangle) can belong to up to 4 vertex groups (m3 format limitation) to a certain degree. e.g. 80% to the vertex group A and 20% to the vertex group B. If a vertex group has the same name as a bone then Blender will assume that the vertex group is controlled by the bone. So in the above example the position of the vertex would come to 80% from bone A and to 20% from bone B.
Since it is a lot of work to assign each vertex indifidually to multiple vertex groups it isn't ususally done manually. Instead you can tell Blender will a single command, that Blender should create a modifer and vertex groups for you, based on the position of the bones and meshes. This works often extremly well. Sometimes you need to fine adjust. In the last section I show you how to do such fine adjustment.
A way of importing that saves you work later
M3 files contain a lot of meta data. With meta data I mean for example invisible hit boxes, that are used to determine if you have selected a model. If you just want to take one part of a model, those hit boxes are totally unfitting and thus worthless. Deleting unwanted meta data is a lot of work. If you are interested only in the mesh with its materials, you can set the import option shown in the screenshot:
Once you have set the option, simply import the model from which you want to take some static parts. Before you import the model that should stay animated, you need to set it back to "Everything".
Cutting out parts of the models
How to edit meshes is shown in a lot of Blender tutorials. Here is a collection of Operators/Hotkeys that are expecally usefull when cominging models:
With [ctrl] + [l] you can expect the current selection to everything that is connected with the current selection.
With [ctrl] + [+] you can extend the current selection. This is a nice way to select a part of a model.
When you press [p] in edit mode you get a menu. This menu you can use to put the currently selected vertices into their own new mesh object. That way you can more easily move it around in object mode.
With the hotkey [p] in edit mode you can also let Blender automatically split up a mesh object by loose parts.
You can join two meshes with [ctrl] + [j] that way you don't have to move them around separatly.
via the 3D view menu Object -> Transform -> Origin to Geometry you can let Blender put the "Origin" of all selected meshes to its actual center. The origin determines around what objects rotate and is also the position of its label. By replacing the origin you can more easily rotate the differnt parts.
With the hotkey [b] you can perform a box selection.
With the hotkey [c] you get a circle which you can use like a brush to select vertices. By scrolling with the mouse wheel you can make the circle larger and smaller
Almost not noteworth but with [r], [g] and [s] you can rotate, move and scale objects or parts of a mesh in edit mode.
Making the new parts move with the existing animated model
1. Firstly you want the bones to be displayed in the rest position. That is the position in which they are attached to the mesh. The following screenshot shows you how to do so. Also good is the X/Rays options which allows you to see bones through the mesh.
2. Position your mesh parts at the positions where you want them
3. Select all your added mesh parts and the armature. Select the armature last so that it is active. Per default you can select objects in the 3D View with a right click. If you hold shift you add an object to the selection. It should then look like that(notice how the bones have a differnt border):
Alternativly you can shift + left click in the outliner to select the objects:
4. Once your meshes are selcted and the armature is active press [ctrl] + [P] and select the option marked in the next screenshot:
5. To watch the model animations in blender, you have to disable the setting again, that the bones are locked in their rest positions:
Ways to fine adjust how the added parts get animated
One way to adjust a vertex group is via weight painting. In a special weight paint mode you can paint on the mesh to increase the influence of a selected vertex group / bone on it. The weight painting looks then like this:
The red parts belong very strong to the current vertex group. The green ones partly. The blue ones a little. The black ones not at all. Via the hotkey [t] you can open a toolbar to adjust the brush.
It is also possible to set the selected vertices to a certain weight if you are in edit mode. The following screenshot shows how to do it:
If you are interested in finding out to which vertex groups / bones a vertex belongs, then you can use the properties bar in the 3D view (hotkey N) to find out:
The important thing is to get the permission from Blizzard. Once Heros is out, I think the chances will increase a lot that they will allow the usage of Heros models in Starcraft 2. I could even imagine that they make it a mod so that people can just link it in as dependency.
I don't have all Heros models. I just have a handfull of models from someone who wanted me to have a look at it. And for the models I received I don't have the textures, since textures aren't stored in the m3 file but separatly.
However the fact remains, that there is at least one person here at sc2mapster who knows how to get Heros models.
Is there an Heros-Map-Editor already? The SC2 Editor allows you to export m3 files, maybe the Heros-Editor will allow you the same once it got released.
The materials you can configure via "M3 Material *" panels specify only how the material will look in Starcraft 2. Those m3 materials have nothing to do with Blender materials, which define how stuff looks in Blender. When you import a model, or when you click the button "Generate Blender Materials" in the M3 Import panel then the addon will try to create Blender materials based on the configured M3 materials.
M3 files don't contain any textures, but reference them by name. So when you click the button for generating blender materials it will search relative to the configured root directory ( In m3 import pane) for the textures. You can see at the console the exact path where it is looking at. You can open the console via the windows menu in Blender (but be aware, closing it closes blender).
You may also want to have a look at my m3addon FAQ.
If you want to render things, you may also want to google for "Blender Cycles Tutorial", Cycles is the new render engine in Blender, which uses new types of Blender materials.
Someone on the forum was sent me some heros models and had a look. They are almost identical to newest of the Heros of the Swarm models. With a few improvements to my m3addon I was able to successfully import a heros models. I haven't however published this m3addon version yet. I don't want to provoke Blizzard.
So please go ahead and get me an statement from Blizzard that it is okay and I will release those changes that make the import possible.
You can use Delphinium's trick to recolor existing textures:
Export an existing texture and have a look at the differnt color channels (In the image program gimp you can do it via Colors -> Components -> Decompose).
When you have found a color layer that has the pattern you want, go in Blender to the Alpha Layer of the "M3 Material Properties" Panel and enter there the image path you want. Then select in the "Color Channels" field the color channel you want to use. RGB and RGBA don't work for the Alpha Layer. That makes your texture transaprent based on the pattern in that color channel.
In the diffuse or emissive layer you then simply check the "Color" checkbox and select a color of your liking.
0
@SoulFilcher: Go
Try to remove the addon and start Blender again. If the m3addon is still there then it is another m3addon version from a different directory.
Blender looks at least 2 directories for the addon. The version specific place I describe in my coin tutorial and the place where the addons are that come with blender are.
0
@SoulFilcher: Go
Did you downloaded https://github.com/flo/m3addon/archive/master.zip ?
Can you upload a screenshot of how your "M3 Import" panel looks like? Note: It is per default not at the top. Panels can be reordered (I show that in the first part of my coin tutorial) and I did that.
0
I added two sections to the tutorial
0
@Acroyer: Go
About specter's visor not beeing connected: Double check that your added mesh part has a armature modifier that links to the correct armature object. Depending on how you imported the models you may have still two armature objects. Also the methods I described in my tutorial for fine tuning help also to verify that your mesh gets influenced by the right bones. Another possible mistake could have been to use real parenting to connect the mesh to a bone. That works in Blender but can't be exported. To verify that this is the case you could remove the modifer temporarly and check if that properly breaks the animation.
The redish/yellow glow come propably from some wrong color channel configuration. I recently changed/corrected how team colors / alpha channels are handled in the m3addon. In older m3addon versions you had a checkbox "alpha as team color". It turned out that the m3 files don't save a flag, but are actually allow you to specify which color channels are used. Per default it is RGB (red green blue). Thus per default the alpha channel does not get used. When you imported the models with an old m3addon version then all material layers are RGB, even if some where RGBA in the original model. So you need to switch it to RGBA for all material layers that have an alpha layer.
I extended my tutorial by two sections. You may want to check them out. It shows how you can do the steps you already did with much less effort.
0
@Acroyer: Go
I updated the m3addon to tell you the mesh object that has the invalid modfiers. That way you can search it in the outliner to fix it. The outliner has a search box at the bottom.
0
@JacktheArcher: Go
A single edge split modifier is allowed after the armature modifier. Actually all imported meshes have an armature and edge split modifier. The edge split modifier is used for sharp edges.
0
@Acroyer: Go
Hi, I created a tutorial for you in which I explain it:
Tutorial: [Blender] How to attach model parts to an existing animated model
0
In this tutorial I show you how to attach model parts of one model to another model that is animated. For example you can attach with this method ultralisk parts to a high templar:
I recommend that you do at least the first part of my Coin Tutorial if you haven't used my m3addon yet. For questions about the m3addon please have a look at my my m3addon FAQ first.
Important background information
Model (Mesh) aniamtions in m3 files are realized with so called bones. A bone is an invisible object that has a rotation, location and scale. Each bone influences to a certain degree a mesh (= a bunch of triangles of which each model is made). In m3 files only the bones are aniamted and they animate through their influence the mesh.
Blender can animate models also via bones. When you import an existing SC2 model you will get an animated bone strucucture called armature and one or multiple meshes that are influenced by it. The relationship between mesh objects and armature will be created for you by the importer.
When you add meshes you typically want them to move according to the existing bones. So you need to tell Blender that your added mesh should also be influenced by the armature. The quick way to do that I will show below. The slow "manual" way would be to add a Armature Modifier to the mesh object. To add the armature manually you would select the mesh object and then add add the armature modifer as shown in the following screenshot:
Since an armature has multiple bones Blender needs to know which bone affects which part of the mesh. This is done via so called vertex groups. A vertex (point of a triangle) can belong to up to 4 vertex groups (m3 format limitation) to a certain degree. e.g. 80% to the vertex group A and 20% to the vertex group B. If a vertex group has the same name as a bone then Blender will assume that the vertex group is controlled by the bone. So in the above example the position of the vertex would come to 80% from bone A and to 20% from bone B.
Since it is a lot of work to assign each vertex indifidually to multiple vertex groups it isn't ususally done manually. Instead you can tell Blender will a single command, that Blender should create a modifer and vertex groups for you, based on the position of the bones and meshes. This works often extremly well. Sometimes you need to fine adjust. In the last section I show you how to do such fine adjustment.
A way of importing that saves you work later
M3 files contain a lot of meta data. With meta data I mean for example invisible hit boxes, that are used to determine if you have selected a model. If you just want to take one part of a model, those hit boxes are totally unfitting and thus worthless. Deleting unwanted meta data is a lot of work. If you are interested only in the mesh with its materials, you can set the import option shown in the screenshot:
Once you have set the option, simply import the model from which you want to take some static parts. Before you import the model that should stay animated, you need to set it back to "Everything".
Cutting out parts of the models
How to edit meshes is shown in a lot of Blender tutorials. Here is a collection of Operators/Hotkeys that are expecally usefull when cominging models:
Making the new parts move with the existing animated model
1. Firstly you want the bones to be displayed in the rest position. That is the position in which they are attached to the mesh. The following screenshot shows you how to do so. Also good is the X/Rays options which allows you to see bones through the mesh.
2. Position your mesh parts at the positions where you want them
3. Select all your added mesh parts and the armature. Select the armature last so that it is active. Per default you can select objects in the 3D View with a right click. If you hold shift you add an object to the selection. It should then look like that(notice how the bones have a differnt border):
Alternativly you can shift + left click in the outliner to select the objects:
4. Once your meshes are selcted and the armature is active press [ctrl] + [P] and select the option marked in the next screenshot:
5. To watch the model animations in blender, you have to disable the setting again, that the bones are locked in their rest positions:
Ways to fine adjust how the added parts get animated
One way to adjust a vertex group is via weight painting. In a special weight paint mode you can paint on the mesh to increase the influence of a selected vertex group / bone on it. The weight painting looks then like this:
The red parts belong very strong to the current vertex group. The green ones partly. The blue ones a little. The black ones not at all. Via the hotkey [t] you can open a toolbar to adjust the brush.
It is also possible to set the selected vertices to a certain weight if you are in edit mode. The following screenshot shows how to do it:
If you are interested in finding out to which vertex groups / bones a vertex belongs, then you can use the properties bar in the 3D view (hotkey N) to find out:
0
@ahrimansiah: Go
The important thing is to get the permission from Blizzard. Once Heros is out, I think the chances will increase a lot that they will allow the usage of Heros models in Starcraft 2. I could even imagine that they make it a mod so that people can just link it in as dependency.
0
It's now possible to create models with RTT with the m3addon. Your tutorial helped me figuring out how to test models with RTT textures. Thanks!
Mini-Tutorial on how to create a simple RTT model in Blender:
0
@ahrimansiah: Go
I don't have all Heros models. I just have a handfull of models from someone who wanted me to have a look at it. And for the models I received I don't have the textures, since textures aren't stored in the m3 file but separatly.
However the fact remains, that there is at least one person here at sc2mapster who knows how to get Heros models.
Is there an Heros-Map-Editor already? The SC2 Editor allows you to export m3 files, maybe the Heros-Editor will allow you the same once it got released.
0
@penticrack: Go
The materials you can configure via "M3 Material *" panels specify only how the material will look in Starcraft 2. Those m3 materials have nothing to do with Blender materials, which define how stuff looks in Blender. When you import a model, or when you click the button "Generate Blender Materials" in the M3 Import panel then the addon will try to create Blender materials based on the configured M3 materials.
M3 files don't contain any textures, but reference them by name. So when you click the button for generating blender materials it will search relative to the configured root directory ( In m3 import pane) for the textures. You can see at the console the exact path where it is looking at. You can open the console via the windows menu in Blender (but be aware, closing it closes blender).
You may also want to have a look at my m3addon FAQ.
If you want to render things, you may also want to google for "Blender Cycles Tutorial", Cycles is the new render engine in Blender, which uses new types of Blender materials.
0
@ahrimansiah: Go
Someone on the forum was sent me some heros models and had a look. They are almost identical to newest of the Heros of the Swarm models. With a few improvements to my m3addon I was able to successfully import a heros models. I haven't however published this m3addon version yet. I don't want to provoke Blizzard.
So please go ahead and get me an statement from Blizzard that it is okay and I will release those changes that make the import possible.
0
@SoulFilcher: Go
You can use Delphinium's trick to recolor existing textures:
Export an existing texture and have a look at the differnt color channels (In the image program gimp you can do it via Colors -> Components -> Decompose). When you have found a color layer that has the pattern you want, go in Blender to the Alpha Layer of the "M3 Material Properties" Panel and enter there the image path you want. Then select in the "Color Channels" field the color channel you want to use. RGB and RGBA don't work for the Alpha Layer. That makes your texture transaprent based on the pattern in that color channel.
In the diffuse or emissive layer you then simply check the "Color" checkbox and select a color of your liking.
0
@EchoedRequiem: Go
I would like to extend my m3addon you that you can import Heros of the Storm models and reexport them then in a Starcraft 2 compatible Format.
Doing so might however annoy Blizzard... So if you could get me the permission from Blizzard,..