Unreal PSK/PSA Tutorial
unreal group
Tutorial on using the
Truespace7.6 plugin and script for importing and exporting Unreal files.
In the tutorial we'll use 2 different psk files to demonstrate the
process. We will use the udnmale files to demo importing psk and
psa files. Next we'll use the ut3_female psk file to show how to
get a custom mesh into a simple game test level.
Instructions March 7 2009:
start by loading the Male.psk file - the status line will be clear when he has completed loading
load the Tank Girl object from the Characters library
rotate and scale Tank Girl to the same size as the Male
PSK mesh has to be made of one mesh. Tank Girl is made of 3 meshes. Add a cube to the scene and boolean subtract it from the tank girl using the default setting of Flatten result. Now Tank Girl is one mesh. Now enter point edit mode and make Tank Girl's arms match the Male model. You could also rotate the Male arms to point in the same direction as Tank Girl(TG) arms.
Use the freezeTransform script to set TG scale to (1,1,1) and rotations to (0,0,0). This will bake the transform into the vertices of the mesh.
the script can be downloaded from here
Use the Attach Skin to Skeleton tool on the Male to detach the skeleton from the skin and then use it on the TG to attach the skeleton to her. Now TG is inside the Male node and the Male mesh is in the PSKNode.
Use Weight Paint and remove all weights from TG's bone named "MyBone". Continue weight painting the rest for a good deformation result.
Use the Heal Tool to finalize the weights. Set "Reduce influences" to 3. I believe unreal allows a maximum of 4 bones to influence one vertex, but when I set reduce influences to 4 the unreal editor tends to crash when importing the truespace psk file. All vertices must have weights. If a vertex has a total weight of zero for all bones unreal editor(ued) will crash when importing.
before
after
Now we can import the animation file Male.psa This psa file has 60 animations so it will take a few minutes to load. The importer puts a keyframe at frame zero, so they need to be deleted for each track. Now all the animations can be viewed. I recommend starting the deletes with the bottom track so you can see the changes as you work.
Frame from imported psa file.
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start by loading the Male.psk file - the status line will be clear when he has completed loading
load the Tank Girl object from the Characters library
rotate and scale Tank Girl to the same size as the Male
PSK mesh has to be made of one mesh. Tank Girl is made of 3 meshes. Add a cube to the scene and boolean subtract it from the tank girl using the default setting of Flatten result. Now Tank Girl is one mesh. Now enter point edit mode and make Tank Girl's arms match the Male model. You could also rotate the Male arms to point in the same direction as Tank Girl(TG) arms.
Use the freezeTransform script to set TG scale to (1,1,1) and rotations to (0,0,0). This will bake the transform into the vertices of the mesh.
the script can be downloaded from here
Use the Attach Skin to Skeleton tool on the Male to detach the skeleton from the skin and then use it on the TG to attach the skeleton to her. Now TG is inside the Male node and the Male mesh is in the PSKNode.
Use Weight Paint and remove all weights from TG's bone named "MyBone". Continue weight painting the rest for a good deformation result.
Use the Heal Tool to finalize the weights. Set "Reduce influences" to 3. I believe unreal allows a maximum of 4 bones to influence one vertex, but when I set reduce influences to 4 the unreal editor tends to crash when importing the truespace psk file. All vertices must have weights. If a vertex has a total weight of zero for all bones unreal editor(ued) will crash when importing.
before
afterNow we can import the animation file Male.psa This psa file has 60 animations so it will take a few minutes to load. The importer puts a keyframe at frame zero, so they need to be deleted for each track. Now all the animations can be viewed. I recommend starting the deletes with the bottom track so you can see the changes as you work.
Frame from imported psa file.
Page 0 Page 1 Page 2 Page 3