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This is ... legitimately insane. Why on earth do you need more than 50 for a 2d portrait?
Modern 3d, cinematic quality, real-time characters barely go over 800 bones. There is no reason you need to for portraits.

Have you tried finessing the skinning of your mesh to the skeleton rather than adding more bones?

First of all 100 and 800 are two radically different numbers, just as much "100 or 1000" are also two radically different numbers. 250 to 500 would be a fine compromise just so that I am never in a position where I have like 80 bones and can't use my hard work.

Also:
1. I believe I have already explained in the other thread that I was in the process of finding bones to delete, and since making that post managed to *this time* trim it down to a mere 50 bones.
2. Your claim that I have no need for so many bones is really erroneous. More bones means more control, and better quality animations. Lets count this out, for a *simple* rig and a simple humanoid mesh, which weirdly enough, being 2D has zero bearing on the number of bones!:
Root->Hips->Navel->Torso->Neck-Head->Hair_Root (7)
Torso->Shoulder.L->Upper_Arm.L->Lower_Arm.L->Hand.L (4)
Torso->Shoulder.R->Upper_Arm.R->Lower_Arm.R->Hand.R (4)
Torso->Chest.L / Torso->Chest.R (2)

So I am at 17 just for the base body. If I had Thumb+Fingers that would be another +4 for Left and right Sides. But I already didn't have these.

So here comes the majority of my bone usage: Hair.
For long hair with long bangs:
Hair_Root->Hair0.L->Hair1.L->Hair2.L->Hair3.L
Hair_Root->Hair0.R->Hair1.R->Hair2.R->Hair3.R
Hair_Root->HairBack0->HairBack1->HairBack2->HairBack3

This is +16 Bones for *just* one hair style. I have four. This hairstyle uses the most, other styles use less.

This doesn't count having bones to control say, the brow (hair along the middle of your hairline).

I *originally* used just one set of bones for different hairsetyles using a single front and back mesh but it didn't look right trying to cludge a single set of bones for four very distinctly different hairstyles and I ended up with a weird flickering issue which so far has only been solved the current method.

Definitely there isn't a way to simplify the hair style rigs beyond "Maybe I can go from 4 bones to 3 for slightly less detail?". If I have something like twintails vs something like a long wide ponytail vs long full hair; these all need their own rigs. I think I had mentioned in the other thread for hair I use two meshes. A front mesh and a back mesh (one to go in front of the face/body mesh, one behind); trying to overlay the mesh textures such that UV unwrapping them to appear in line with the body mesh *and* having a single rig to rig my animations to work with any hair style was in the end impractical.

Instead I use 8 meshes, four front meshes, four back meshes; UV unwrapped so each mesh corresponds to a different quadrant of the texture file and instead of having all of my dds textures for hairs being roughly the same coordinates, they've been reexported so a style corresponds to a quadrant; and then I skin each mesh front-back pair to their own sub-armature so now I am more free to make custom animations regardless of hairstyle. The currently unused hair meshes show up as invisible because the part of the texture file is empty with only alpha channel.

I was 57/50 bones for four hairstyles; I was able to find 7 bones to delete; but it is really annoying to have this kind of limit at all when it is almost 99% certainty just an arbitrary macro definition like, #define MAX_HAIR 50 in one of the stellaris source code files. It could be easily 100, or 200, or 1,000 with no performance hit until someone actually uploads a custom animated portrait with 1,000 bones.

I don't know why you made the claim that a 2D animation inherently uses less bones as it is quite false, 2D animations using Spline, Live2D, etc like the Launcher animations in the League of Legends client easily use 200 bones for high quality animations; there are games like Shadowverse that are also bone intensive and that is the level of quality I am aiming for.

Fortunately *this* time I was able to reduce my number of bones, but this is a limitation and presumably without a need for it to be so small; if I wanted complicated hairstyles *and* like an alien creature with animated tentacle appendages this would be extremely difficult to make it work.

I think minimum the number of joints allowed should be 100, but 250 would be much better. Allowing me to have different hairstyles and non-humanoid body types like tentacle monsters, lamias/nagas, other kinds of insectoids and so on. Or wings! I have to choose between wings or hair basically, and I can't have animated fingers or thumbs.

Trust me, I know what I'm doing when it comes to rigging I've been doing it for five years. Asking for a higher bone limit isn't insane when the limit is just so low and arbitrary. Maybe 1,000 is too much, but 100-250 is reasonable.
 
View attachment 174557

I hear there is an exporter, where can i find it and how does it work?

You can download the exporter right here:
https://accounts.paradoxplaza.com/profile/downloads

How do I use the exporter?
There is a guide on how to use it on the wiki.

For what games can I use the Clausewitz Maya Exporter?
It's fully compatible with Stellaris and Hearts of Iron IV. And it's partially compatible with EU4 and CK2 (you can still use it for everything Europa Universalis IV and Crusader Kings II, but it's a bit more complicated. See Aerie's response: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...formation-and-faq.924764/page-3#post-21088022).

My exporter does not work, what did i do wrong?
Did you RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR when you installed the exporter? This is a must for everything to work properly.

I get an error in maya saying " ..Cannot find file "pdx_export_ui.mel".. "

There is supposed to be a "pdx_export_ui.mel" in your document folder " ..\Documents\maya\scripts". If missing, try running the installer a second time. Make sure to run it as administrator

Is there something similar for other software besides Maya, such as Blender?
Unfortunately not at this time. It's an addon for Maya. But we will be releasing our .mesh format so that anyone willing and with the skills can write an exporter for other software, like blender.
can we get updated links for the basics, FAQ etc , please
 
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Hello!
I am a beginner in 3D modeling and try to add model to HoI4 for the mod. I can't understand what's happening when we adding model in a game. Why texture is displaying incorrect in a game? On the Blender texture is correctly.
 

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Okay I'm a noob, is this the same tool that's going to be needed for CK3 to mod custom characters or is there something else, or has it not come out yet...

If by mod custom characters you mean, create custom 3d models in Maya, and only Maya 2015/2016 then:

Maybe?

Though if you want more options like using newer versions of Maya as well as Blender ross-g "Import/Export PDX Mesh and Animation Tool" would probably work best.

Both would probably have to be updated to work with Crusader Kings 3.

But all of this is moot as Crusader Kings 3 hasn't been released yet. o_O

I don't think anyone is really able to answer that question for certain at this time.
 
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If by mod custom characters you mean, create custom 3d models in Maya, and only Maya 2015/2016 then:

Maybe?

Though if you want more options like using newer versions of Maya as well as Blender ross-g "Import/Export PDX Mesh and Animation Tool" would probably work best.

Both would probably have to be updated to work with Crusader Kings 3.

But all of this is moot as Crusader Kings 3 hasn't been released yet. o_O

I don't think anyone is really able to answer that question for certain at this time.


Ah okay thanks, yeah sorry for necroing the old thread. I just thought I remembered seeing somewhere that mod tools were coming out early or something, maybe it's not out yet lol. Anyway, thanks for the response.
 
Hiya all,

The Maya Exporter has been updated. No major big changes, but lots of small iterative ones.

Download still available at:
https://accounts.paradoxplaza.com/downloads

Changelog (roughly, last update was in 2016):
  • Support for newer Maya versions up to and including Maya 2020
  • Support exporting only skeletons
  • Better support for exporting large models
  • Warning message when a joint is not part of a skin cluster
  • Supports materials that have their shaders in different shader files
  • LOD fixes
  • Exporting transformation matrix for locators
  • Update exporter to output lod percentages for newer projects
  • Warning for Multiple Root Joints found
  • Added Create Material script and respective UI, that creates a material, attaches it to the selected object and adds the shader attribute to it.
  • `clausewitz.settings` now file uses JSON
Please note that this tool is provided 'as is' and we cannot provide much support on it, but we hope this makes some modding easier for you all. :)
 
@Joror Hi, are you able to verify that the version of the Maya Exporter that was updated is working?
I've installed it, the plugin loads in Maya 2018 and the "clausewitz.settings" file is placed at "C:\Users\Ross\Documents\Paradox Interactive\PdxExporter\settings"

But the plugin shows no available projects in the UI, meaning none of the other plugin functions are available unless I create all of the expected material attributes by hand etc ... which is tiresome.

Any ideas why the exporter can't find projects? Is the settings file being copied to the right place during installation?
1591553627162.png


Thanks
 
@Joror Hi, are you able to verify that the version of the Maya Exporter that was updated is working?
I've installed it, the plugin loads in Maya 2018 and the "clausewitz.settings" file is placed at "C:\Users\Ross\Documents\Paradox Interactive\PdxExporter\settings"

But the plugin shows no available projects in the UI, meaning none of the other plugin functions are available unless I create all of the expected material attributes by hand etc ... which is tiresome.

Any ideas why the exporter can't find projects? Is the settings file being copied to the right place during installation?
View attachment 586151

Thanks
Did you change the "export_path" and "target_exe" settings in the "projects" part of the to point towards the game location? (you can use the steam directory you installed the game to)
The "path" setting ending with "tools/" can point to any directory.
 
@Joror Sorry if I wasn't clear in my question, I will rephrase:

No matter what "projects" are available in my clausewitz.settings or what paths I set for "export_path" / "target_exe" etc
There are no projects available in the Maya UI, it's like it can't find or can't read the settings file at all.
1591728903723.png


I am not the only one with this problem, there are two other posts on the subforum about this.
 
I have the same error as ross-g above.

I followed the installation instructions and export guide on the Stellaris wiki.

This is the relevant code in clausewitz.settings
Code:
{
        "name": "imperator",
        "path":    "C:/Users/matt/Documents/Paradox Interactive/Imperator/mod/DevPunicBuildings",
        "export_path": "C:/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common/ImperatorRome/game",
        "target_exe": "C:/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common/ImperatorRome/binaries/imperator.exe"
}

When I open the PdxExport menu this is the message I get: No root joint was found.. I have also seen this warning when opening the PdxExport menu: // Warning: file: C:/Users/matt/Documents/maya/projects/default/scripts/pdx_export_ui.mel line 634: Item not found:

When I attempt to select a shader I get this error, which I assume is because I cannot chose the game and the exporter cannot find the shaders. // Error: file: C:/Users/matt/Documents/maya/projects/default/scripts/pdx_export_ui.mel line 313: Found no materials to add

5.PNG
 
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so good, we have now an "updated" exporter for an 2000$ per anno application, modders are ever wished to have that... what a genius move. because modders always rich$$$ [/ironic off]

i am exported round about 2000 models over the years with different blender exporters, and these are priceless ...
the best elaborated program is by ross-g, at least because he is supporting his tool for the crowd!

since many years ppl ask for it, an official supported blender exporter, but this feels like an joke.
i just can hope u working on an official blender version of it, and its just not announced yet.
 
Just chiming in to add to MattAlexi and Ross-g's issue. The old plugin was working fine with Maya 2016. I'm now using th enew plugin with Maya 2019 and having the exact same issue. No games are listed in the plugin and so no shaders can be created
 
So has there been a patch or anything for this? It wasn't working for a bunch of us, not sure if it's working for anyone, would be nice to be able to use this again!
 
Question for the devs, can the engine handle bone scaling along certain axis? I have been messing around with CK3 animations and the game can certainly support general bone scale, but not so sure about scaling in specific directions.
 
Im really sorry for bumping on this channel but I just want to say that I have that same problem, My 2016 version used to work but i decided to update my pdx exporter with th newer one and I now encounter that problem as above, I have no backup of my 2016 file versions so I decided to uninstall it completely and switch to 2018 version, the same thing happened just like ross-g said, I wont be able to continue my stand alone ship mods if this bug is not fixed.