Lwo2psk

UnrealEd has build-in support for static meshes from Lightwave files, but not for meshes with bones and animation. So here is a tool to do exactly that:

Download: [10]

new version ! (6/3/2005)

- just a small fix to a small glitch with the resting position of the first bone, which could result in misalignment of model & bones in unrealed (thanx to PoLuX for pointing it out)

The package contains two small tools:

lwo_2_psk – converts a .lwo and a .lws file to a .psk file
lws_2_psa – appends .lws animations to a .psa file

lwo_2_psk

This tool converts a .lwo and a .lws file to a .psk file and an empty .psa file. The .lws file is required as it contains the reference-positon of the bones!

Usage

lwo_2_psk LWOFILE LWSFILE

Example

lwo_2_psk myModel.lwo refpos.lws
This will create a file named myModel.psk and an empty file myModel.psa. The .psa file can be filled with animations using the lws_2_psa tool (explained below).

Restrictions

The following restrictions apply when using this tool:

Only triangles are allowed, no nurbs surfaces, etc.
Vertex maps on the model must have the same name as the bone that uses them.
Only one (!) layer will be recognized. This will normally be the last layer... but don't count on it.
The maximum length of bone/vertice/surface names is 32 characters.
1 meter equals 1 UU (but you'll be able to scale in UnrealEd after importing).
When importing to UnrealEd, use the Assume Maya Coordinates switch (or rotate manually).
every Point needs uv-coordinates

lws_2_psa

This tool appends .lws animations to a .psa file. (It always appends and never creates that file. You can create an empty .psa file with lwo_2_psk as explained above).

Usage

lws_2_psa LWSFILE PSAFILE

Example

lws_2_psa WalkF.lws myModel.psa
This will append the WalkF animation to the myModel.psa file.
Caution: The name will be exactly as given in the command line with the .lws extension stripped from it, so the command line lws_2_psa Scenes/WalkF.lws myModel.psa will create an animation named Scenes/WalkF!

Restrictions

The following restrictions apply when using this tool:

Every bone of the scene is read out – do not have any additional bones in your scene!
The position and rotation of a bone should be present in every "key" frame. If not, it will be taken from previous "key" frame (no tweening!).
The frames-per-second "speed" of the animation may not be consistent with UnrealEd, so tweak your animation in UnrealEd.
Interpolation between frames is linear in Unreal.

These tools were created and successfully tested against .lwo and .lws files created by Lightwave 7.

if you got problems see Lwo2psk/Error Messages, and mail me if you can't solve it on your own

Author: Christopher "Ntmy" Steglich (dantmy@gmx.net)

Category Application