Add a new Animal in Surviving Mars is not really hard if you have a good knowledge in 3D and Blender , I'm sorry if you use another 3D software but Blender is essential. The most difficult part is the 3D Animation. If you I have never open the Mod Editor it's not a problem and the scripting isn't necessary.

And... sorry if there are several errors in the texts, English is not my native language.

• Good knowledge in 3D and Blender
  
• Your favorite 3D software
  
• Your favorite Texturing software
  
• Blender (2.79b only) + HGE Tools (yes, it's essential!)
  
• Text Editor
  
• Surviving Mars Project Laika
  
• Surviving Mars ModEditor
  
• Official documentation

Becarful, in this guide I do not treat:

• How to use Blender or other softwares
  
• How to create a PBR texture

There are a lot of videos on Youtube to learn Blender quickly.

There are four categories. It's important to chose it before to create your mesh. Because each category has its own animation states (idle, walk, run, jump...). (See official doc : Animal)

• Household pets
  
• Roaming pets
  
• Static pets
  
• Pasture animals

For this guide I chose a Pasture Animal because there are only three animation (idle, walk, graze). I present to you Scrap the Robot my futur "animal" for my ranch ! (Okay, It's strange...but the meat of robot contains a lot of iron!)

It's simple, if your animal is grazing, the game calls the animation "graze" and play this animation. You can't change these names.



My mesh is modeled and textured because I don't treat these parts here.
If you use a another 3D software it will be necessary to import your mesh in Blender.



Important step the position of the origin of the mesh and axis.

• Origin (0,0,0) at the base of the mesh
  
• Mesh must be oriented to -Y axis (it's important for the animations)

( see doc : Mod Items > Entity >Marking Static Objects for Export )
Your mesh must be named with this naming convention for the HGExporter.

You need to add one material and various textures. I can't detail each texture you can edit the source file to see them.
( see doc : Mod Items > Entity > A Note on Materials )

Basically you need three textures :

• Base color map
  
• Normal map
  
• Roughness Metallic map
  
• Emissive (if your animal is fluorescent : firefly, nuclear animal...) Don't forget to create a second UV Map for this texture.

This is an important part, to animate your mesh you need to add an Armature and various Bones. I'm not sure if you can import your mesh+animation from another 3D software.
Each bone is used to animate each part of my pet. You can add other bones if you want. In my case it's very simple !

• 1 bone for the Body (it's the important root_bone)
  
• 1 bone for the Head
  
• 2 bones for the Arms(right & left)

Now in my Scene I have an Armature with 4 Bones but my mesh is not linked to him.

If your mesh it's not an animal you can skip this part! But If you are created a Robot(or Object) you need to assign the Vertex Groups for the Bones.




To add new Vertex Groups, in Edit Mode select all faces composing one part of the body and Add new vertex group and repeat for each body part. Each vertex group must have the same name as the bones.

To link your mesh with the Armature it's easy.

• Select your Mesh in the Scene
  
• Drag & Drop to Armature
  
• An small pop-up appears with various option, select one :
  
  • Empty groups if you use the vertex groups.
    
  • Automatic Weights works fine if you have placed correctly each Bone.
    
  • Envelope Weights is more complex to use, but has better rendering

Now, the Origin used by the game is the Origin of the Armature.


Now you can create your Animations for each state.

Animation time in-game & Blender
The game use : frame/s (fps)
Blender use : image/s (ips)
3333fps = 100ips = 4s
1666fps = 50ips = 2s
833fps = 25ips = 1s

Note : The walk animation is a bit special.To forward your mesh, you must use the Y- axis

Reminder : This is a Pasture Animal, there are 3 animation states : idle, walk, graze.

• Select the root_bone of the Armature, here it's "Body"
  
• Set the Entity name, mesh name, and the current animation state name
  
• Check "Loop Animation" to repeat the animation, because your animal is alive!
  
• Before to click on "Add New:..." button you need to define on the timeline the range of this animation.

My settings step-by-step
Note : Keep the root_bone selected! Don't select the other bones.

• Enter the first animation state name "idle"
  
• Select in Root Motion : None
  
• Set range : 0-100
  
• Click on "Add New:..."
  
• Enter the next animation state name "walk"
  
• Select in Root Motion : CME
  
• Set range : 101-260
  
• Click on "Add New:..."
  
• Enter the last animation state name "graze"
  
• Select in Root Motion : None
  
• Set range : 261-410
  
• Click on "Add New:..."
  
• Last IMPORTANT step set the range : 0 to 410. The exporter need to read entirely the timeline.

Finally you have this... and you can click on "Export"

Your Asset is exported in this folder : AppData\Roaming\Surviving Mars\ExportedEntities


There are various files and folders, don't touch them. But you can open the .ENT file with Notepad++ (or other Text Editor). You can control if all animations are correctly exported.


Now! Launch the game and open the Mod Editor.

• Click on the first button "New Mod", enter a name and open it
  
• In your mod, Click on "New mod" to add a new mod item and chose the "Entity "
  
• Click on "..." button and go to AppData\Roaming\Surviving Mars\ExportedEntities to select the .ent file
  
• Click on "Import"
  
• The field "Name is automatically filled

• In your mod, Click on "New mod" to add a new mod item and chose the "Animal"
  
• Set your new Animal

It's finished! You can try your new animal in the ranch.


If you have various bugs (invisible mesh, bad textures, no animations...) try in first to reload the game.

If you are good with Blender, it's very easy to create a new animal for Surviving Mars, there are no scripting. In this guide I created a basic mesh to explain you the bases. Normally you don't use the Vertex Groups but the Automatic Weight or Vertex Weight for more realistic mouvements,it's most complex.

Blender & Textures files[drive.google.com]
Mod files[drive.google.com]