3D Animations and Blender

[PythonBlue]

So, for anyone here who wants to pursue animated 3D modeling but can't get Maya for whatever reason, I made a breakthrough last week.

Thanks to the 1.3 update to Amnesia, it's now possible to import animated Blender models provided they were exported in .fbx format! Unfortunately, there are some quirks to be addressed in order to get your model working:

1. This may apply to all .fbx files, but regardless, make sure your material name in Blender is identical to the name of the dds files you want applied. This quirk I didn't notice with .dae files, but still, if you don't follow this rule with .fbx's, the model viewer will crash, and the model editor will display an invisible mesh.

2. For animated models, there's a chance that not all vertices will be attached to a bone, as I learned the hard way with a model I exported from Halo for testing. The simplest fix for this is to separate all the faces from each other in Blender, which, unfortunately, will result in flat shading instead of the more realistic smooth shading, but this side effect can be made more subtle with a high polygon count. If anyone else who's succeeded with Blender managed to implement a better fix, by all means, let me know.

UPDATE: the most effective way to correct broken vertices for rigged models without sacrificing smooth shading: when you export your Blender model to FBX, make sure that all edges are split, like before, and that you enable face smoothing, the latter being in the FBX export settings.

So, bearing these tips in mind, you'll now be able to feasibly have custom-modeled NPC's and enemies in Amnesia without use of Maya!

Apologies if I posted old news; I just don't see anything about this in the development wiki.