I came across numerous people on here asking for more blood, gore and horror related items on 3D artist threads. Initially I figured that I'd just cut up a char-base mesh, have some guts and bones sticking out and give it a gruesome texture and cash in on all the zombiegame people but it just feels morbid to make such models :S. I no longer enjoy doing these dark kind of models...my horrorshooter days seem to be far behind me.

So now, as a public service I'll teach all of you how to accumulate a large set of dead bodies and corpses fitting your enemie characters just fine! ... and the best part is that this is easy to do, you dont even need to know how to model. All you need to know is how to import a custom model into Guru correctly.

All you need is a copy of fragmotion. You can download it here and activate a free license. It will be fully funtional after you do so, but you do have to enter a prayer every week to keep it active, if this bothers you I suggest you read this tutorial. Fragmotion is a great tool to unwrap and export for guru... I'd advise you to purchase a copy anyway.

So! lets get this party started:

Open up fragmotion and click "file" -> "import". Choose your gameguru folder and go where the character you want to have a dead version of is located, import it. I chose one of the stock mobzombies simply because they make great corpses...they already look dead anyway.
To be on the save side, remove the materials. I have had models with multiple materials show up black in editor. This will neither damage the UVs nor mess up the texture, dont worry.



Once this is done click "animation". You will then get another menue (1) where you should click on "anim-1". Now go to the bottom of the application where there is something that resembles a videoplayer interface. (2) You can either drag the marker on the left or use the play/stop commands to browse through the animations. - Select an animation frame where the character looks dead (be creative, make impaled or hung versions aswell...you can also create statues) then stop.



Your character should be in a pose like the one you see on the screenshot now. You are basically done. (that wasnt so hard now, was it? ) What you will have to do now is click on file and then "export pose". Not export as this will export the model as an animated character.



Select Direct X (.x) and you'll get a few options. Best to export a compressed mesh for top optimisation. Leave everything else as it is for now.
Now all you have to do is know what textures go with your model and import it into guru. Thats it. Repeat until you have a large set of bodies to use in your maps. If you know a little texturing you can easily make burned victims or add some blood to the diffuse map.

Hope this helped some of you! Please don't hesitate to post if you have questions or need something clarified.



-Wolf

thanks, nice tutorial, very helpful

Thank you Wolf. Nice, easy and straight to the point
I had forgotten all about the "export pose" feature, thanks for the tut.
best

Excellent tutorial! Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.

Great tutorial, this will help out a lot of users that want this sort of thing. Fragmotion is an awesome program I'm really close to purchasing it.

This is very useful. I was making some characters die in ragdoll at start, hoping they would land in some interesting poses. But that's just a memory waste... and the player is likely to see them drop lol

Just as a side note, I use fragmotion a little when converting .x formats so not really enough to purchase for, you don't actually have to enter the prayer. You can click cancel and it will have a 5 second timer and a little pop up ad every now and then but still be fully functional.

Thanks. It seems like I should download fragmotion again and maybe write a application which can pray

Is there an easy way to reduce the resources (polys and such) used by the model before you export the pose? Otherwise I guess its just the same as setting a specific animation for the full model except the model can be static and not dynamic?
Nice tutorial though, I can certainly see its uses just think a lower poly model would be icing on the cake

Great Tutorial Wolf

This is a great tutorial Wolf and will definitely help a lot of people.

I am sure we will all miss your 'Undead shooters'!

Cheers

Jay.

Bookmarked.
Nice one Wolf!!, thanks a lot



Would be nice, some soldiers have 17k polys.

3com

nice one Wolf, tried this out already works very well. brilliant!

Nice tutorial Wolf , Thanks

I've done this exactly for fpsc classic. I think fragmotion is the best low poly modeler for .x format. If you want to lower the tris count on the models, export pose as .obj. open it in mesh lab and reduce the count.

go to filters

remesh ,simplification

Quad edge collaspe (with texture)

pick the poly count...... mess around with the settings.

export out and then back through fragmotion to .x format

Thanks Wolf.

Hello!

I'd like to bump this because I believe seppgirtys comment is relevant and might be useful to some.

Link to MeshLab

- Wolf