3DS Max gets around it so there has to be a way in Blender.

These are models extracted straight out of Dota 2. I have no control over it. I'll be sure to let Valve know that you disapprove of their design choices though.

It's weird that only some of the sword models exhibit this behavior whereas others (still overlapping) work just fine in Blender. Maybe those swords that do work are minisulely offset from each other or something.

I can't really use 3DS Max to "separate" them in the same scene as they need to both be in that same exact spot for their animation bind pose to work correctly. I might be able to split them into two separate meshes in 3DS Max (that's probably what you meant), but that gets uglier further down my pipeline.

Ohhh you know what. I think there's misunderstanding here. I'm saying separate objects with overlapping verts should not weld and I think you think that I meant verts within the same object.

"Could you explain to me exactly what you would want the override to do?"

Checking this override box would not weld verts together that overlap.

There are 2 swords that are overlapping each other but bound to different bones - left hand and right hand. When you move one of the bones, say for an animation, it moves that sword but a bunch of the verts are welded to the other sword.

Here are some pictures:

Import the .smd into Blender:
http://i.imgur.com/IYD6bxV.png

Move one of the swords in Blender:
http://i.imgur.com/WARLCTZ.png

Import an animation into Blender:
http://i.imgur.com/uoJZpRW.png


And how it should look:

Import the .smd into Max:
http://i.imgur.com/EPvZ7fC.png

Move one of the swords in Max:
http://i.imgur.com/4ArL9jl.png

Import an animation into Max:
http://i.imgur.com/2YuyaYA.png


P.S. it is incredibly hard to upload pictures to imgur without getting distracted by the pictures there

"I'm pretty sure many people prefer that above every triangle being a seperate thing from every other triangle."

And I do not prefer it that way. So an optional override option (left column of Blender) when importing makes everyone happy.

Could we get an overrride option when importing then? Because that breaks these models :(

From Dota2, importing "root/models/items/alchemist/brutalblades/brutalblades.mdl" (converted to .smd) results in what appears to be some of the verts welded together. The two swords are overlapping and if you move one of the weapon bones, the sword assigned to that bone moves but a bunch of the verts appear attached to the other sword still.

Importing the .smd into 3DS Max 2012 appears to work correctly however.

Comparing the number of vertices after importing the model into both software seems to back up my theory about welding verts:

Blender 2.71 with BleST v2.2.1: 401 verts
3DS Max 2012: 511 verts

A few of the other Alchemist swords exhibit this behavior too, but not all of them, oddly. "root/models/items/alchemist/butterflyswords/butterflyswords.mdl" is an example of a sword for Alchemist that does import correctly into Blender as a counter-example.

Please let me know if you need the files or more information.

Thanks!

Brilliant! Maybe a future version could have a checkbox that goes through automagically and applies the constraint to every bone matching with the animation bones. I also found it useful to set the weapon's parent back to the main animation/mesh after applying the bone constraints. This kind of keeps everything in one "object".

Thank you!

Hi Artfunkel,

Here is a zip file with the .smds and .blend file. I import "faceless_void_refrence.smd" first, followed by "facless_void_weapon_reference.smd", and then "run.smd". I also included another animation "flail.smd" as more test material.

Dropbox[www.dropbox.com]

These models are freshly extracted and decompiled from Dota2. I'm using Blender 2.68 and Blender Source Tools 2.1.0. Blender 2.70 has the same result.

Please let me know if I can provide anything else to help!

Originally posted by Vintage:

I'm not the techie, I'm just the... techie. Whatever, I don't work on the Blender Source Tools, I just know how they work, so don't ask me.

Lol! Well I thank you for your time in reading it and your input.

Hopefully Mr. "Artfunkle/Artfunkel/the author of the Blender Source Tools" can come up with something. It's kind of important that I get this working properly in Blender (3DS Max isn't appropriate). I'm availble if I can help in any way providing more info or test files.