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Porting a custom weapon model into SCVI - Blender workflow

#1
These are the phases and steps that I would usually go through everytime I want to port a custom weapon model for SCVI.
You can mod every type of SCVI weapon using this method. It's practically universal.

I'm using Blender 2.79b because most of my working addons and custom scripts are still in it. You can use the 2.80 and the 2.90 variants and still refer to this tutorial. Everything from Blender that was featured in this tutorial is the same in the latest builds of Blender. You can use any build that you prefer for your work.

This is a also quite the advanced version of a tutorial as it does skip over some minor parts that i don't think needs repeating.
You can just ask me more about any of these in the SCVI modding discord

For this tutorial, I'll port Vergil's Yamato from Devil May Cry 5.
Now let's get into it.


Mesh/Model Preparation Phase


[Image: 001.png]

Set the scene to use centimetres as the uniform unit of measurement.
Import the psk of your selected weapon into Blender via the import/export psk addon.
Select only the imported mesh and scale it to 0.1. This mesh is now your reference mesh for the scale and basic shape.

[Image: Mesh_edit_001.png]

Scale your new mesh to fit the imported mesh.

[Image: Mesh_edit_002.png]

Doesn't need to follow any standard scale. You can just eyeball it if you want.

[Image: Mesh_edit_003.png]

Some mesh/model will have their own unique shapes and sizes so in this case the Yamato is a longer katana compared to Mitsu's.
So I used the proportional edit tool to move the vertices to fit the reference shape. Again you can just eyeball it to look as similar as possible to the reference mesh.

[Image: Mesh_edit_004.png]


UV Remap Phase

Some mesh/model will have separated mesh with their own unique UV maps and textures. The Yamato does have two separate pieces of the hilt with their own UV maps so I'll have to combine the texture maps and recreate the UV mapping.
From the original texture sizes, the separated hilt part textures are on 512x512 while the rest of the katana uses only one other set of textures with the dimensions of 2048x4096.
There are other ways to do it I'm sure but this is how I combined the texture in Photoshop.
Create a new blank image with the dimensions 2560x4096. The width value is obtained by combining both of the width values of the separated textures, 512 and 2048.

[Image: UV_fix_001.png]

Combine all of the needed texture maps and then load it back into Blender for the UV remapping.

[Image: UV_fix_002.png]

Usually, I'll duplicate the mesh to use it as a reference during the UV remapping.
The next part is a bit confusing so I'll divide it into two methods, calculated and eyeball-ing.


Calculated method

Since you can use the grid-like units to move and adjust the UV map in the image viewer, you can actually do some calculations to help ease your work here.
The width of the new textures is 2560 which can be divided by 512 into 5 (2560/512=5), you can assume that one unit of movement is a 0.2 (1/5=0.2).
So if you need to scale any parts of the mesh for the UV remap you can use the increments of 0.2.
Now, when you simply go into the edit mode in Blender to adjust the UV map, the mesh will retain it's older mappings (the positioning and the scale) albeit being slightly off.
You can just select the island and move it back into place if there's no scaling needed.
In the Yamato's case however, I had to select the UV island and scale it down on both of the x and y axis by 0.8 and then scale up only on the y-axis by 1.2 (referring on the increment value obtained from earlier calculations).

[Image: UV_fix_003.png]

Then I can move them back into their places. Some islands don't need to rescale and some needs more adjusting on the scales. Take your time to get it all right.

Eyeball-ing method
Yeah, just eyeball it. Will need some really good set of eyes though to notice the texture seams on the mesh later on. No calculations needed.


Rigging The New Mesh

Going back to the reference mesh, you can check that it does separate the mesh into their own vertex groups.

[Image: Rigging_001.png]

In the edit mode, you can know which group is for which part of the mesh.

[Image: Rigging_002.png]

So simulate the same vertex groups for your new mesh. Make sure the naming conventions are the same.

[Image: Rigging_003.png]

Then exit the edit mode and select the new mesh first , then select the armature (the armature that comes with the imported mesh) and press Ctrl+P to parent the new mesh to the armature.

[Image: Rigging_004.png]

Add the armature modifier to your new mesh and select the reference armature as the target object.

[Image: Rigging_005.png]

If you did all the steps correctly, you can test the rig by moving any of the bones in the pose mode.

That's all the phases and steps for the mesh preparation in Blender that I would usually go through to port weapon models into the game. After all of the above steps are done, the mesh is ready for import into the Unreal Editor.
For more info on the steps listed above, you can inquire about it in the SCVI modding discord linked earlier.


Have fun and stay safe.
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