Battlefield Modding Tutorials BFMODS

This post chronicles my attempt at importing a new player model into the game, as well as the end result. Hopefully someone can tell me what I'm doing wrong. Thanks in advance for those who look!

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1) Aquire model

Meet Boxman. Boxman was made by Sniperjack for this very purpose. Boxman has been converted to an .sm file and then imported into max, which you see below



2) Import and pose .ske

Next step I imported USSoldier.ske from animations.rfa. Using only the rotate and move commands, I posed the skeleton to more or less fit Boxman. It wasn't a perfect fit by any means, but I don't care since this is only a test run.



3) Weight vertices

I made a skin modifier, added the bones from the skeleton, and used the weight table and weighted every vertex to nearby bones. This is easily the longest step (Especially since Boxman went from 80 to 200 vertices while being converted to .sm).



At this point the skin modifier works pretty well, I think. Boxman can dance!



4) Export

Now, I select the mesh and go Battlefiel Tools > Skeleton and skin > Export .skn. I save it as Boxman.skn. I put Boxman.skn in my animations.rfa file and boxman.sm/.rs in my standardmesh.rfa file. I now need to tell the game to actually use these.

5) Code

I want to make boxman appear as the body of british soldiers. So I open up Objects.con and go to soldiers/BritishSoldier/Geometries.con and find:

GeometryTemplate.create AnimatedMesh Soldier/3PBritBody
GeometryTemplate.setSkin animations/BritBody.skn
GeometryTemplate.file BritBody
GeometryTemplate.hasDynamicShadow 1
GeometryTemplate.setLodRange 0 0 1 30 2 80
GeometryTemplate.setLodRange 3 150 4 210 5 230
GeometryTemplate.setLodPercent 0 1.0
GeometryTemplate.setLodPercent 1 0.7
GeometryTemplate.setLodPercent 2 0.3
GeometryTemplate.setLodPercent 3 0.2
GeometryTemplate.setLodPercent 4 0.1
GeometryTemplate.setLodPercent 5 0.05

I change the second two lines to:

GeometryTemplate.setSkin animations/Boxman.skn
GeometryTemplate.file Boxman

6) Try it out in-game

Load El Alamein and:





Oh yes. I like spikes.

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So, what did I do wrong? I have a working skin modifier in max, so I'm guessing the error is later, but I could be wrong.

I've tried and retried this in various different mods, but the result is pretty much the same. Sometimes I don't get the "no vertices skinned" error, and sometimes the "spikes" actually move when it tries to make an animation, but it is never the right shape.

Make sure you gave every vertice a weight,and gave every bone a vertice.

Every bone? What about, like, the head and hands? Those are going to linked to other models via other .skn files.

Nope nope nope,you must import the head and hands position them and skin them as well,this skeleton is the only skeleton,it does the entire body in 1 shot,there is no separate skin file for hands and head,only separate meshes,just import them and skin them with it.

hmm ok,The reason for this is because,they are all skinned in one scene and all have to be present and weighed,BUT,the the skins are exported for each mesh,i/e you still have to have them all in 1 scene and weight them all,just export a .skn for each mesh

Which means,Import Everything,give each mesh a separate .skn then skin them make sure every bone,every vertex,done

Surrender yourself for a few days, let me get a video Tutorial up on my old youtube channel.

yay