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Home ? Importing Assets ? Blender FBX / Collision : some rules ?

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20/06/2014 10:13:58

WabbyMuvizu mogulExperimental user
Wabby
Posts: 98 		Hello there,

As I said on my profile : I'm back on Muvizu after a long break and I'm very enthusiastic with the new capabilities with the FBX format.

(sorry for my bad English)

After doing some tests and reading old posts in the forum, I'm wondering if there is a good way to making props with collision in Blender (direct transfert in Muvizu, without another software, if possible).

I understand that we have to set the origin point of the object and again for the collision mesh, but I have some strange results in Muvizu : the collision is never where I want :-)

The wiki (http://muvizu.com/Wiki/wiki/86/fbx-collision-and-geometry-guide) is not enought explicit for me to understand this problem, so I hope some of you can help me, with your big experience :-)
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20/06/2014 16:38:23

InsaneHamster
InsaneHamster
Posts: 272 		Hey Wabby,

Urban has a great tutorial on this here http://muvizu.com/Video/31664/How-to-use-Decimate-lower-Polygon-count-Impor

hope this helps
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20/06/2014 22:38:50

WabbyMuvizu mogulExperimental user
Wabby
Posts: 98 		Thank you InsaneHamster.

Indeed, this tutorial (thank you too, Urbanlamb) is very useful and it works well with a simple cube (for collision).

In fact, the problem appears when I try to make a little more complex mesh for collision.

Maybe, I should focus my attention on this last part.

Thank you, again.
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21/06/2014 01:04:44

urbanlamb
urbanlamb
(Account inactive)
Posts: 1786 		its a bit buggy and it likes just cubes for collision it hates more then one or it did last time I tried for that. Also in the wiki is how to make things shiny etc etc fazz wanted the info and since its something that everyone would want i plopped it in the wiki

as usual I created a highly technical and complex title for the info :/

http://muvizu.com/Wiki/wiki/125/fbx-blender-material-settings-make-shiney-transparent-light-thingies


for more complex collision with ASE format if you used cubes that had a slight gap between them then it worked well plus you have to name the meshes appropriately

so if the object is "house" you need to label the meshes UCX_house1, UCX_house2 etc theoretically if it was in unreal engine you could make one continuous collsion mesh as long as you obeyed the rules but it seems not to work well in muvizu. What was working was cubes (or rectangles whatever it was it was a box that I proportioned properly) i did not join them up or anything i just used a bunch of cubes with slight space between them although the only reason i needed it was for something like a flight of stairs. I actually just often use a single small cube and make most of my stuff 'almost no collission'

with the fbx what I found is that the collision was only calculated properly if you put the origin for the mesh at the center of mass and the collision cube at this spot as well with its origin at the collision cubes center of mass. Since I was never interested in making accurate collision unless it was for stairs this was good enough for me but that is what I did find out that worked consistently with the new muvizu play+ and fbx

However if you find the ASE exporter (there is one that works well with blender by the way) you can make accurate collision as with the 'house' example out of bunches of cubes. Dont join them into a single mesh though they must remain loose


here is the tail end of a video for ASE and in the description below is links to the ase exporter that was working (last I checked) I dont know if its up to date for the most recent version of blender since fbx format is more universal I just was using only that


edited by urbanlamb on 21/06/2014
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23/06/2014 12:23:48

WabbyMuvizu mogulExperimental user
Wabby
Posts: 98 		Thank you for your help.

"Apply" is the answer (rotation, location & scale), before exporting.

And using several simple cubes is better for collision (UCX_Name_01, UCX_Name_02...).

Special thanks to Jamie for his help too :-)
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24/06/2014 18:49:36

urbanlamb
urbanlamb
(Account inactive)
Posts: 1786 		glad you got it to work *cough* i dont use blender for fbx in muvizu lol I did try it though but i wanted to get normal maps and other things on which blender won't do ... but like i said i did try it. If i am not adding a normal map and just using plain textures I think I used blender for my fbx attachements in my strange purple butter battle video.

I prefer to use blender because i like the ui better (yup that's right I prefer blender set up way much better) so I am hoping that these normal map issues etc are solved in the next big summer release otherwise I guess I will bend to the will of the commercial market..
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25/06/2014 10:02:48

JamieMuvizu staff
Jamie
(Account inactive)
Posts: 609 		Urban,

Normal maps work just fine from blender. There was a previous version of blender with a fbx exporter that did not support all the features but that was fixed in a more recent release.

I think 1.69+ supports all the export options for the FBX format.
edited by Jamie on 25/06/2014

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Direct, don't animate!
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25/06/2014 14:13:37

urbanlamb
urbanlamb
(Account inactive)
Posts: 1786 		ah okay I havn't checked in awhile because I use other stuff as well, but i like to support the blender cause and always have its software works better in many cases then the stuff that cost thousands. I did try it in 1.69 when it first came out and at that time the exporter was not letting me export normal maps and nothing i searched out said otherwise but I found lots of complaints on the blender forums asking for this feature. I know they started working with valve awhile ago and the hopes were that they would add this feature to the fbx exporter.



I just want to check on this was this written when normal maps were possible in muvizu?
http://muvizu.com/Wiki/wiki/85/fbx-material-guidelines

because i was using the current releases and fbx exporter at the time and muvizu was not interpreting that a normal map was even there. I had to resort to a commercial package. If it was can you tell us how you got normal maps into muvizu from blender perhaps? because nothing I tried work it just stripped it from the model.
edited by urbanlamb on 25/06/2014
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25/06/2014 18:31:28

JamieMuvizu staff
Jamie
(Account inactive)
Posts: 609 		Normal maps have always been possible in Muvizu:Play+

You just need to set them up right before export. Make sure you export the normal texture as well

There are plenty of tutorials out there, trying searching youtube for bake normal map.
edited by Jamie on 25/06/2014

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Direct, don't animate!
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25/06/2014 20:45:37

urbanlamb
urbanlamb
(Account inactive)
Posts: 1786 		I know how to make a normal map I was asking you how you got the map from blender to play + as everything I tried didnt work I had to use maya to get the map into muvizu.

If you can tell me how so i can stop using maya? (i hate maya with a passion)

reread what i wrote ?
if you look in the gallery you will see i have added asset with normal maps
I said blender fbx does not seem to work to import normal maps into muvizu i have to use other software. I was hoping you had a secret that no one else had and that I had not discovered myself

if so please share? because i spent a very long time researching blender and its ability to put normal maps onto files outside of blender the conclusion I came to was you can't because their fbx exporter does not support that ability.


Edit: i just checked the repository again and as far as i can tell the fbx blender exporter still does not support normal maps properly. So if anyone knows differently and can explain it then it would be appreciated because so far after working since the release of play + I have not found a way to move normal maps straight from blender to muvizu play+ or any other map either only textures. As far as I can tell this has not changed.

please read these old threads below. If i am wrong please can you give the correct information as the only evidence I can find is that in fact the blender fbx exporter still does not support normal map or specular map export because it was designed to work with the udk bare bones editor which has its own support for normal map importing. So the only way I found was to use some other piece of software to add the maps.


http://muvizu.com/forum/topic3202-polygons-a-study-.aspx

http://muvizu.com/forum/topic3115-fbx-udk-editor-stuff.aspx


i have been through about 10 tutorials now and they all say the same thing "it doesnt work for normal maps" and they dont import them they import them seperately afterwards I was hoping something had changed but i just tried it again and no the normal maps are not importing. So if there is something you know that can help can you please share it? I have been giving people instructions on how to use blender with muvizu for a long time. I have not found a way to help them with this.





those were the most promising of the videos unfortunately neither of them actually import the textures because they say it doesn't work? is there another exporter somewhere maybe? lol because really i have tried and found no answer so if you have the answer please share it
edited by urbanlamb on 25/06/2014
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25/06/2014 22:50:17

urbanlamb
urbanlamb
(Account inactive)
Posts: 1786 		I still get no normal or spec map on this fork when exporting directly from blender to muvizu. This fork in on the gallery and I ran through iclone 3dexchange to get the maps on in this case. There are is no information on the internet on how to get the normal maps to stick however i can export it as an obj file and get my normal maps to stick in iclone. Likewise I cannot get the maps to stick on an fbx export from blender to iclone or blender to the UDK environment.

So I am unsure how this is working? It would be nice to solve this problem I have spent a year looking for answers and have concluded that in fact there are none. Or I am a moron either way in light of the amount of questions I have answered maybe I can get some help? /begs


edited by urbanlamb on 25/06/2014
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26/06/2014 09:51:46

JamieMuvizu staff
Jamie
(Account inactive)
Posts: 609 		Version 2.71 certainly supports this feature, luckily it was released today!

According to the documentation on the blender FBX exporter, normal map export is implemented and expected to be working.

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/Import-Export/Autodesk_FBX

At the bottom of the page, under the heading "Implemented and expected to be working!" and under "Materials"

Materials <-> Textures relations: textures can affect:
DiffuseFactor, DiffuseColor.
TransparencyFactor, TransparentColor.
EmissiveFactor, EmissiveColor.
AmbientFactor.
SpecularFactor, SpecularColor.
Shininess, ShininessExponent.
ReflectionFactor, ReflectionColor.
Normal/bump.

edited by Jamie on 26/06/2014
edited by Jamie on 26/06/2014

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Direct, don't animate!
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26/06/2014 15:34:43

urbanlamb
urbanlamb
(Account inactive)
Posts: 1786 		Oh thank goodness.

I have been using the most recent releases and had no joy so far. Its annoying it should be working but is not. It was giving me no joy in 2.7 or 2.69 and I am not a coder I never test their test builds really I just want what comes out the other end Big Grin

Everything on the gallery now i had to actually optimize outside of blender.


I will download it and take a peak!

If it does then I will make a new muvizu video on how to set it up because most people here only want the mechanical stuff they dont want all the other stuff. I can understand this and so have no problems showing this to people if it helps them make videos at the end of the day their purpose to use blender is just to get objects into muvizu not to become modellers. Myself I knew how to use blender before I picked up any of these real time engines, but with play + people only really want to make the movie.
edited by urbanlamb on 26/06/2014
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28/06/2014 00:59:53

urbanlamb
urbanlamb
(Account inactive)
Posts: 1786 		I hesitate to update this because I dont think your gonna like what I found out .. but for future referance and so people know for the time being the newest fbx exporter which was updated to support now binary and ascii formats is not able to create an ascii file that exports maps.

However the exporter does export the maps perfectly everytime in Binary format.
Unfortunately muvizu only supports the Ascii right now.
Perhaps the newest release of muvizu will support the binary I guess I will ask when its released

okay so i found a work around after about 3 hours of farting around

first you have to build in colission into the model it won't work without it
then export the file in binary format which is configured after autodesk 2013 which is not compatible with unreal 3.
Then if you download this converter
Make sure to save everything the same name in a new folder or the collision wont work and you wont be able to import the object

Choose binary or ascii autodesk fbx 2011 as the destination file format
as the muvizu is using autodesk 2011 the blender fbx exporter ascii was an older version of autodesk which was only partially usable in muvizu

then you get all your map layers



I will probably put this in the wiki as its pretty convoluted and you need to choose certain material configurations as well.
edited by urbanlamb on 28/06/2014
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28/06/2014 02:23:09

InsaneHamster
InsaneHamster
Posts: 272 		Thanks Urban for the info. It's much appreciated
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28/06/2014 02:30:03

urbanlamb
urbanlamb
(Account inactive)
Posts: 1786 		lol I will have to make a video I think. I will also do something in the wiki. Probably do the video this weekend using that fork or make a little lamp or something. It will just be all the mechanical settings as this is unique to muvizu really. There are other ways to deal with it in unreal engine as it has an onboard editor allowing you to add things after import.
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29/06/2014 09:23:34

WabbyMuvizu mogulExperimental user
Wabby
Posts: 98 		It's difficult for me to understand all that you have written (I'm French, and my english is not very good enough) but I want to thank you for sharing your experience and a video tutorial will be very appreciated too :-)
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30/06/2014 15:42:53

urbanlamb
urbanlamb
(Account inactive)
Posts: 1786 		i will make one very soon sorry i was going to make one this weekend but was out all weekend anyhow one is coming I just have to sit down and do it. I decided to make it a two parter and show people how to make something low polygon and have it not look low polygon since everyone is posting about the blockiness of their models which can be cured by using normal maps and not increasing polygon count. So I figured I would kill two birds with one stone.
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03/07/2014 08:55:45

WabbyMuvizu mogulExperimental user
Wabby
Posts: 98 		Hum... after a lot of tests, my conclusion is that the FBX format (for complex props) is a very hazardous in Muvizu... maybe because of Blender 2.71, I don't know but I decided to use the ASE format even if it's less powerful compared to FBX (specially for the materials) :-(
edited by Wabby on 03/07/2014
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03/07/2014 10:34:23

ukBertyMuvizu mogulExperimental user
ukBerty
Posts: 975 		Here's what I do....

  • Use ASE with Ziggmesh for importing objects. No matter what anyone says, collision has no use in Muvizu and only causes issues. I would not be able to create anything like as complex sets as I do if I could not remove collision.
  • Use FBX for attached objects. Attached objects have no collision so FBX is fine. Also FBX avoids the inconsistency with reversed faces appearing incorrectly on attached ASE objects but correctly if you import the same ASE object.
  • When building sets or attaching objects always have a second copy of Muvizu open with a blank set as a sandbox. Import/attach objects in this empty set to make sure that Muvizu doesn't crash. Some of my sets can take 10 mins to load so I need to know that Muvizu will tolerate my objects before importing into a live set.


Hope this is of some use....
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Home ? Importing Assets ? Blender FBX / Collision : some rules ?

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