Here is a video of the Blue Whale I’m making for the Unreal Marketplace
I have basically finished my blue whale model now however I forgot to set the scale correctly before ridging and animating and now I cannot find a way to scale the model up to the right size as it is currently the size of a mouse… Any idea what the best way to scale up a skeletal mesh post rigging without messing up the animations would be? Would this be best done in the modeling software (Blender) on export, on import or in UE4?
If I was doing it for myself I would leave the scale issue for the irony as a secret joke, “ITS A BLUE WHALE the size of a mouse…” and scale it up unmanly every time I use it in a blueprint or level however I realize this is not a very professional workflow so ill fix that up as soon as possible.
Model details:
1x animated and rigged whale model
(please note the mouth does not open.)
9,200 vertices
33 bones
2 curves
(used to guide the bones for fluid movements and hooked at both ends to control bones.)
2 animations:
Idle and swimming
4 turning poses
(used in this cinematic with UE4s’ aim offset feature allowing the whale to twist in the direction it is turning)
Textures:
Defuse 4096 x 4096
Normal 8192 x 8192
Height map (R), Ambient Occlusion (G), Secular (B) 4096 x 4096
(the last three maps are combined into the RGB of one texture for optimization and tidiness)
Water spray:
1 x particle effect
Textures
Water spray defuse texture and normal map
(Sea water not included, just the spray that comes out of the whales spout.)
You can set the scene units and scale in order to fix your scaling issue - set it to metric and put in 0.01 for the scale, and it will be properly scaled for UE4.
Were you modelling in meters instead of cm? What n00854180t said should work.
Any plans for other creatures sharing (roughly) the same skeleton. such as another type of whale, or dolphin? I would love a full sea-critters pack, but would happily take this model by itself for the right price.
n00854180t and BlackRang666 Yes that is the correct method, I’ve done it that way before but this time I forgot to do it before rigging it so of course now all setting the units to metric and 0.01 has done is allow me to see what scale the whale is (10cm long!) I cant see how I could actually scale the model up without messing up the animations…
I have tried scaling up the armature and then applying the scale however as soon as I press the apply button the curves which are attached to the armature and controlling the spine of the whale get messed up, I guess I could un hook them from the control bones, re scale the armature then re hook them, if there is no easier way then I will try this (after creating a backup copy of the model) somewhere along the line I’m bound to mess up an loose a whole load of animation but if I have a backup copy I suppose it doesn’t matter.
There is also something a bit odd going on with the rotation and about 3 vertices that are moved ever so slightly inwards when the additive animations are applied, I have no idea why it happens, it only happens when the additive animations are applied though otherwise its fine and you would not see it unless you look closely underneath. As you can see from the video none of these issues affect the usability of the model but it did specify in the unreal marketplace guidelines something about no scale or rotation issues…
BlackRang666 I’m glad you like it! I was modeling in Zbrush so who knows! then me being me I just went strait into rigging as soon as I got it into blender without checking what scale the model was (as I said turns out it was 10cm!)
As for other sea creatures, I am still a student and since the holidays are almost over I would like to get this one up on its own to start with. I don’t know whether I will have time to work on a whole pack and do college projects. I also wasn’t sure how much demand there would be but if there is the interest then I am definitely up for making more.
Ok so the reason changing the import size didn’t work before is because I have “use root motion” ticked on some animations and not on others which is why the scale went odd not because of additive animations, what I have done is changed the import scale and rotation, this does not fix the fact that the FBX files are still too small but if people use whale that’s already imported into UE4 then it will all scale correctly. I don’t know if this is an excepted solution buy Epic, I will give it all a once over and submit it tomorrow, if they do not like the scaling the way I’ve done it then I can go back to it but it seems to be good now to me.
Unfortunately due to technical issues we have been unable to get the ue4 project up for sale on the Gajatix store yet so at the moment the only model formats are .FBX and .blend, however we plan to get it up as soon as possible. To check if the ue4 files are up look under the “Model Formats” section and see if .uasset or .uproject are there.
Bad news, Epic turned it down for “Insufficient quality compared to other offerings in category” and “Lack of overall value to users looking to create a game” I think this is a little harsh that being said the characters section does seem to have the highest standards, most the characters have over 50 animations + morph targets so I can see that my model is less versatile compared to products like this.
If I make a full Whale pack then I will try again for the unreal marketplace however for the time being you will have to perchance this model elsewhere.
If it makes you feel better, I haven’t gotten anything besides rejections so far yet either.
Looking at the shots on that page, it might be a bit highpoly, then again, it is a whale. If it were me, I would lower the poly count, clear out the rigging, and start fresh with a new skeleton with no scaling problems.
