[John]

So, as most of you know I've taken up modeling.

This kind of modeling:



All done with programs that are completely free!
Lots of the professional grade modeling programs are quite expensive and could cost you lots of money, but I guess you do get what you pay for. Blender on the other hand is free and can do most anything you need done with modeling for this game. It also has a sharp learning curve but luckily for you I've already done most of the work, research, and crying so you don't have to.

What this tutorial will teach you:

1. How to modify and create meshes with blender
2. How to add to existing models
3. UV mapping (for textures)
4. How to edit said UV maps into something pretty and shiny with Gimp
5. How to weight stuff so it moves right
6. How to compile it so it works

Things you will need:
1. Blender
2. WinRAR
3. GIMP 2 (it's free) or any other photo editor that's fancy
Use Google to find this stuff.

Ok, let's get started first you need to install the jedi academy plugin suite: http://jkhub.org/files/file/1413-blende ... gin-suite/

Contains installation manual. Read it.

Now we need to create and organize some folders so that the plugin will work properly.

You need to create a folder called models in your base folder for JA. Then in your newly created models folder create a folder called players. So you address should look something like this when you are done:

C:\Program Files (x86)\LucasArts\Star Wars Jedi Knight Jedi Academy\GameData\base\models\players

Leave that window open and open up a new window and go to the base folder:

C:\Program Files (x86)\LucasArts\Star Wars Jedi Knight Jedi Academy\GameData\base

In there you should find an archive file called assets1.pk3.
Open it with WinRAR.
It should look something like this:



So follow this path: assets1.pk3\models\players\

This is the folder that has the most the default skins and models for the game in it.

At the bottom you will see a folder called _humanoid.

Copy or drag it to the base\models\players folder.



Now after you have chosen a model that you want to modify, move it to the base\models\players folder.
This folder contains the skeleton and animations for all player models and is where blender will reference the default skeleton from.
Now you are all set to begin modeling.

[John]

Section 2. Adding a new mesh to an existing model (BASIC)
Open up blender. It will look something like this:




Just click outside the menu to close it.
Blender will open with some meshes already present for first time users. You want to delete these. Just press Ctrl+A to select them all then hit delete.
Set the top drop-down menu to info





Set the middle drop-down menu to 3DView




Set the bottom drop-down menu to info





Drop down the File menu and select Save Startup File so these setting are saved for next time you open up blender.
Now we import a model. Go to the top drop-down menu under File and go down to import, then select the JA Ghoul 2 model (.glm) option.




Navigate to the base\models\players folder and whatever model folder you put there to edit. Select the model.glm file and click import.




It will look something like this when you open. You can navigate around the model with the numpad or the mouse. To see what the controls are for navigation just go down to view on the middle drop-down menu, and then to navigation. Go ahead and start saving your progress by going to file and save.





If you do not have a numpad fear not for you can use the mouse also for navigation. Use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out. Ctrl+mousewheel to move right or left on screen. Shift+mousewheel to move up and down on screen. Alt+Ctrl+mousewheel to rotate screen around horizontally. Alt+Shift+mousewheel to rotate screen around vertically.
On the right of your window you will see the outline and properties panels. This is where the most important stuff takes place so don't lose them. The outline shows all the meshes present and hierarchy. The different model_root's are the different levels of detail or LOD, meaning how the detailed the model is at different ranges or distances. You don't have to have multiple LOD's you only really need one, but to edit an existing model and remove them is a huge pain. Best just to leave them.





Now time for the fun stuff. This stormtrooper has recently been trained by batman and needs the proper equipment like the armclaw things and bat-ears. Let's see if we can help him out.
There is several ways you can do this. You can add any of the preset meshes or planes and sculpt them into something of your liking. I found an image of something I liked on Google and saved to desktop and am going to open the image as a plane.




You see it shows up to the side of the model and useless and grey as it is. Go to the middle menu and select texture from the viewport shading menu.





As you can tell it can be pain trying to navigate around this mesh to edit it with the stormtrooper in the way. So, with the mesh selected hit the numpad / key or you can go to the view menu and view global/local option. Now you won't be distracted by the other stuff and can focus on editing this mesh.





On the middle menu go to the model interaction mode menu and select editmode





We need to make a mesh out of one of those claws so we are going to first subdivide this thing first to make it easier to cut on. On the left side of your screen is a panel called mesh tools. Down about on the third table there is an option for subdivide. Press it several times until the mesh is subdivided up as much as you want or go down to the slider for number of cuts and input the amount of cut you want per side.





Now select the knife tool, hotkey K, and trace along whatever you want. Make sure to make connections to the other lines. For this tutorial I am only going to knife one claw out and duplicate the mesh to make the other 3 claws.


[IMAGE]


Once you are done select solid from the viewport shading menu, same place where you selected texture from. Still in editmode go to the selection mode and select face select mode.




Now all the faces of the mesh will show up with a little dot in the center of them. The other modes are line select and vertex select. Line select will select only lines and vertex select mode will select only "vertexes" (vertices)(points where lines intersect). Press C to activate select mode and circles should appear where your mouse usually is. Use the mouse wheel to make this bigger or smaller. If you have objects selected prior to select mode you can clear deselect them by pressing A which is a hotkey that toggles between select all and deselect all for whatever selection mode you are in (vertex, face, line). To exit select mode, press the Esc key.
Now select all the face that you don't want around the mesh that you want to keep delete them by pressing the delete key and select delete faces from menu.





Continue cleaning up the mesh by removing any lines you don't want or need for the future by using line select mode, selecting lines, delete, and then select the dissolve edges option to keep faces intact. Use Ctrl+Z if you make a mistake that need to be undone or Alt+Ctrl+Z to bring up the history menu. Keep in mind that you do not want to delete to much as each line or vertex is detail if you choose to reshape the mesh later on.




To get this mesh ready to be duplicated we first need to arrange it on the viewing plane. You can use the properties panel on the right to Transform it by location, rotation, or scale, and by using the red, blue, and green axis arrows to move it. For now we are just going to rotate it. In any selection mode press A to select all and then press R, the hotkey to rotate. While rotating you can press X,Y,or Z to choose what axis you want to rotate the selection around.




Now you can also edit the mesh to get it to the right shape and size. Since this bat claw is going to be the same on both sides I am going to edit/reshape half of it and mirror it later on to the other side.
Using whatever selection mode you want(vertex, line, face) make selection and move around as desired. Keep in mind that using the red(X), green(Y), blue(Z) axis arrows help moving a selection only along that axis instead of trying to guess in a 3D environment on a 2d screen.






Once you have your mesh the way you want it you need to do a UV map of it. A UV map tells the mesh where texture goes on it. We are going to do the UV map now so we only have one claw to paint as opposed to like 6 later on since we are duplicating the mesh later. In editmode with everything selected go to the top menus and to the screen layout menu and go down to the UV editing option.
Should look something like this:



No on the mesh menu in the middle of the screen go down to the mesh drop down and click unwrap. From here you can edit the UV layout as you want it or to an image if you choose to load one. Go down to the Island Select button at the bottom of the left screen. Now you can select an entire UV map for a given mesh (Island) and move it around or rotate it. Now I'm going to rotate the Island so it looks better on the screen by pressing R key.




After you have the Island arranged the way you want it you can export it by going down to UVs and Export UV Layout save it to somewhere you can find it later. To Learn what to do with these UV maps go down to the skinning part of Section 5.




Now go back to the default screen lay out. In object mode select the mesh you want and go down to the object drop down menu and select duplicate object or Shift+D.

Note: I did the UV map before duplicating the object to avoid having to slip the finished mesh and remapping the separate objects. Objects that have already been UV mapped keep the map through duplication, mirroring, resizing, etc.




After you have duplicated it don't move it. Just press enter. You should see a second plane show up in your outline menu usually with .001 ending or something similar.




With the .001 mesh selected go to the object menu and select mirror. You can mirror the selected mesh across any axis you want. In this case we want to mirror across the Z global and press Enter.




Go to edit mode and select the entire mesh by pressing A and go to the panel on the left side of the screen and press the button that says Flip Direction. This reverses this direction of the faces of the mesh so that they face outwards again. Mirroring the mesh made them face inwards. If you don't do this texture will only show up on half your mesh later on. Now we need to join the two meshes so while holding shift+left click to select both meshes. Then go to the panel on the left that say object tools and go down to the button that says join.




Now that you have joined both meshes you can begin copying it across to complete the other two claws that were pictured. Go to object menu and duplicate objects or Shift+D. Move them along the appropriate axis, scale, and distance to your liking. After you have things the way you want join the meshes.




Now we want to rename the mesh to something more appropriate like armclaw_0 and give it a parent. The _0 at the end is associated with the model_root LOD. As a rule with goul2 models all meshes have to be connected up through the hierarchy seen in the outline panel. Usually try to parent meshes to the object they are connected to.




At the bottom of the object context panel you need to add ghoul 2 properties. Essentially this is the name of the object for use of the skin files where you will assign a texture. And if you forget this blender won't let you export. So we'll use r_armclaw here.




You probably noticed that once you parented your mesh it disappeared from you window and the outline. It didn't disappear, it just moved and resized. Press numpad / or change view in the view menu from local back to global. If you look between your models feet you will see that the mesh you created is still there, it is just smaller.




Move, rotate, and scale the mesh until it looks right to you and looks attached to the correct object according to the parent.




In the outline select skeleton_root and make sure the X-Ray and the Name boxes are checked.




Going back to your mesh go to the modifier tab and select armature. Make sure object is set to skeleton_root. Rename Armature to skin. Do not hit apply; just leave it as is here.




Now moving over to the object data tab rename the mesh data block to whatever your mesh is called, armclaw_0 for me. Now go down to the part where it says vertex groups and press the button that looks like a '+'. This tells the mesh what bones it is to group its vertices to for movement. As a rule all vertices must be weighted.



From looking at the bones and names we can tell which bones the mesh needs to be weighted to. Go down to the name of the group, select and rename to whatever bone you will be weighting vertices to.




Add other bones that your mesh may need to be weighted to.




With the object selected go to the object interaction mode selector and choose Weight Paint.




Your mesh should turn dark blue, meaning it has no weight. Red means full weight or that your mesh is 100 percent weighted to a certain bone. On the left a panel should appear with various weight tools and blend modes. If you can a fairly complex model the weight gradient tool is a good way to apply an even gradient of weight to all vertices along its path.




After you have finished with the weight go to edit mode and select all. Then go to Mesh menu up to faces and select triangulate faces. This had to be done because Ghoul 2 requires that all faces be triangulated.




Go to object mode and now we will duplicate the object to move it over to the left arm. So duplicate the mesh and move, rotate, and scale. Also don't forget to rename it appropriately for the left arm, parent it to the left or opposite side, and the G2 properties at the bottom for the left arm.




Go back to the object data tab for you need left side mesh and rename the vertex group rradiusX, or any other bone where a side r for right and l for left is indicated, to lradiusX so that the weights that were for the right bone will now apply with the left bone.




Now we will add the different levels of detail for the mesh. You usually want to check in game at this point before adding the LOD's to make sure your mesh is weighted properly and doesn't look weird with movement. To add the LOD's simply duplicate the mesh, leave it where it is and rename it all and change the parent to the next LOD. So I would rename this to l_armclaw_1 and parent it to l_arm_1. You don't need to change the G2 properties for LOD just leave it.





Do this for the all meshes you added. After that if you have added all meshes you wanted to you can export the model by going to File, export, JA Ghoul 2 model (.glm). Save it in your base\models\players\*your model* folder as model.glm.




For skinning and compiling go down to Section 5

[John]

Section 3: More advanced meshes and UV editing.
This section will deal with a little more complex meshes and what must be done to make them compatible by ghoul 2 rules.
Now, our dear stormtrooper needs some ears to complete his batman sexiness. In the previous section I already showed you how to create basic meshes so I will be skipping a lot of steps in how I am making this mesh. Don't be alarmed.
I'm going to start out with a basic plane mesh. Subdivided by 1 and used the knife tool to cut a triangle.





Now I'm going to delete the faces around the triangle. Now I have a nice triangle mesh. I then select the outside edges of the triangle and on the mesh tools on the left side press extrude. This extrudes the selection out. Press X,Y, or Z while extruding to choose which axis to extrude along. Z in this case is what I extruded along.




Get it about to the correct length then add a loop cut and slide about a third of the way up from the bottom.



Select the top edges again and hit the scale button (Hotkey S) from the meshes tool on the left side of screen. Scale it down to about half the original size.




Add a loop cut and slide about a third of the down from the top. Then scale the top lines down again to 0. You should now end up with something that looks sort of like this:




Now we want to parent it to head_0 and shape it to the top of the helmet. Now this could be a pain with all the rest of the model and LOD's in the way so we are going to use Shift+Leftmouse to select head_0 and bat_ear_0. When they are both selected press numpad /.




Now we have them both in a window easy to work and see in. So, move around vertices and edges to come up with something sort of like this:





But we end up with this:




Now we need to UV map it, and since this is a 3D model with sides you UV map is going to end up like this.





And that will never work. So what we need to do is split some edges. So I am going to select the edge of any sharp angle (anything greater than 89) and split it by going to mesh, edges, and edge split.




After we split the edges go to UV mapping and unwrap again and it should turn out like this:




This is good, you can kind of tell which side is the front and back of the ear. Now we want to add this to the same UV map as the armclaws. Go down to the bottom of the UV editing screen and add a new image. On the left there is a section of the panel for images. Click the folder button and load any previous UV maps you have previously saved that you want to add more to.





Rotate and scale the Islands around using R and S to rotate and scale until you have them about where you want them. Then under the UV's menu export the UV layout.




Add G2 properties, triangulate all sides, modifiers, and vertex groups. This case the vertex group we will use is cranium.




Weight the ear to the cranium 100 percent.


[IMAGE]


Duplicate and mirror on ear to other side and after you have transformed it to satisfaction join the two ear meshes together at the top of the head and add LOD's. Export the model as model.glm to whatever folder you opened it from.

[John]

Section 4: More Advanced weighting
In this section will deal with how to weight an object to more than one bone and touch a little more on UV editing and parent hierarchy's.
So here we have Galak the philosopher who has recently taken up philosophering after his demise at the hands of Kyle Katarn. As you can see he has grown a lot since his younger philosophering days and he seems to have out grown his toga of youth. Let's see what we can do to help.





So first thing we want to do is lengthen the toga. What did was cut the mesh in half so i can work with only half then I will duplicate and mirror it later.





Make sure all the faces are triangles. You can do this yourself with the knife or you can go to mesh, faces, and triangulate faces. Add any detail you want and then UV map the mesh. Make sure any sharp angles are split.





Now for the weighting. You want the weights for each bone to blend together. Use the vertex group panel on the right to select bones and add weight using the options on the left panel.








Duplicate the mesh and mirror over the X axis. Switch the vertex names around to apply from the right to the left(ex. change rtibia to ltibia) since the mesh is mirrored.





With the mirrored mesh still selected go to the left panel and hit the flip directions button so that your faces on the mesh will flip outwards since during the mirror process they were flipped inward.





Now blend the weight from both side together a little more evenly so that the flow is smooth. You want very little cross blending across the halves just a little so that the mesh doesn't move like a pair of shorts when you are done.






Weighting can be either the easiest or hardest part of rigging your mesh. Takes a great deal of trial and error. Mess with the bones by rotating and moving them around or export your model and test it.
After you are done weighting you still need to add the mesh to the other LOD's. Here I edited on an existing part but I don't want to make the other LOD's of hips and weight them individually. So, I'm going to duplicate hips_0 and add it to the other LOD's.
One thing to keep in mind is that the hips of this model are pretty high up in the hierarchy so I can't just delete them for room to add my modified mesh. Since everything else is essentially dependent on it, deleting it would turn your model to something like this:





But we don't want that, so I will show you another way to go about it.
First thing you want to do is select the object you want to replace and move the entire mesh using edit mode. Has to be in edit mode or else you will just move the entire model. Just select all vertices or lines and move the entire mesh over then go back to object mode. Use shift+right mouse to select the part you want to replace and part you are replacing it with. Make sure that the part you are replacing it with is highlighted red. The ordering is important in determining what name it will inherit. Use Shift+Right mouse to change the ordering. Then hit the Join button on the left panel.





Go to edit mode and select all the part you want to get rid of and delete.





Now you have successfully replaced the desired part without disturbing any of the hierarchy. Do this for the remaining levels of detail. After you have finished your model is ready for exporting.

[John]

Section 5: UV layouts to textures and compiling.

This section will deal with what to do with a UV layout once exported and compiling new stuff in skin files.

As you should remember from our dark knight stormtrooper we exported a couple of UV layouts that need to be part of the same image. Using the free photo editor GIMP you can get most things done.

With GIMP open go to File and Open as Layers. Select your 2 or more images you want merged using the Ctrl key.





You should end up with something like the below image. Go the panel on the right and to the tab at the top about layers.





Select the top layer and go to the Layer drop down and select merge down.





Now that the layers are merges select all by hitting Ctrl+A and using the fuzzy select tool (U) deselect all the empty are by holding Ctrl and clicking in a empty space not within one of the UV layouts





You now have the UV layouts selected and you can edit within the bounds now. After you have textured it the way you want, you can export it by going to File and Export As...





Export it as whatever name you want and select file type. Usually .jpg and .png are the most common file format that works with JA. Save it somewhere you can find it. Put it in the \models\players\*your model* folder.



Compiling:
Go to your \models\players\*your model* folder and open the model_default skin file. You can open this with most word processing applications. You want to take all the old model paths and replace them with a new one for your custom model.
In this case you need to replace all the stormstrooper names with the name of your new model. In this case it is battrooper.
This can be done easiest with the find and replace feature of Microsoft word.





You also need to add your new model parts and texture paths to the list. At the end of the list add the names you gave your meshes with the G2 properties and the path to the image using the same format as the rest of the skin file. The image formats can stay at .tga.
If you decided you didn't want a certain part of your model showing up you could use *off in place of the texture image path. So if I wanted to turn the bat ears off I would put: bat_ears,*off




Save the files and edit any other textures that you want.

Now go to where your modified model.glm is located

C:\Program Files (x86)\LucasArts\Star Wars Jedi Knight Jedi Academy\GameData\base\models\players\battrooper

and copy the battrooper folder to your desktop. Create another folder called models. In this folder create another folder called players and in this folder put you battrooper folder. Exit out and right click the new models folder and select the Add to Archive option.





Make sure the ZIP button is selected, not the RAR. Rename it to whatever you want and end it with the extension .pk3





Copy this .pk3 into your japlus folder or base folder or however you role. Make sure you remove or rename you blender reference models folder from the base folder or it will interfere with the models. I usually just rename it to emodels.

[Key]

great tutorial, John!

[Zabuza]

I love you John.

[Mandalorian]

Fantastic! Next time I get on my laptop and try this out, expect some of the most random models in this world.

I already have some experience with blender, and I have a better 3d model making tool which is compatible with blender c:

[Sakito]

Awesome tutorial john =^_^= <3 it

[Jato]

thumbs up!

[Samurai X]

Excellent Tutorial!!! I'm using a lot from here to do my skin
Sadly lots of images are no more. Is it possible to reupload it or they are gone forever?

[John]

Yeah, Imageshack decided they didn't like being free anymore and several of my originals got corrupted. I'll get it fixed eventually.

[Samurai X]

Nice to hear that! <3