Importing Tower Unite Models with Maya

Overview

This Guide focuses mainly on the steps required in Maya to port your 3D model to Tower Unite. Modeling and Rigging are only briefly described.

Import/open the model. (For Maya light only obj- and fbx- files work)
Click: File/ Set Project… Create a new folder for your model, select it and press “Set”.
Click: Create default Workspace. Now go inside the new folder, save your Maya file and create the folder “images”. Lay all your textures inside.
In Maya go to: Windows/ Rendering Editors / Hypershade and change the path for every Texture to the new location. Select a shader on the left side of the Hypershade. Next to “Color” click on the black rectangle with the arrow. Now enter the new texture path in “Image Name”. Repeat this with all Shaders.
Import the Tower Unite Rig[www.towerunite.com]

bring the model in Pose to fit the Tower Unite Rig.
delete all history: Edit/Delete All by Type/History
Edit the model as desired.
I recommend to combine all objects in the end to one mesh. Multiple objects on the model cause strange dark areas ingame. Also remove the old joints that may have came with your model (not the Tower Unite once) and unlock all attributes in the Channel Box (those with the blue rectangle) by selecting them and rightclick/ Unlock Selection.
Freeze the Transformation by selecting the model (not the Joints only the mesh) and click on: Modify/Freeze Transformations. Delete all history again.

Select the pelvis joint on the Tower Unite Rig
On the left upper screen select the category “Rigging”, go to Skin and click on Bind Skin.
To make sure everything works correct, click on the small rectangular beside “Bind Skin” and click on Edit/ Reset Settings
Go to the Outliner (Window/Outliner) and type in the search bar: twist. Now select all the Joints (CTRL) with “twist” in their name (eight in total) and last select the model in the 3d View (with shift).
klick on: Skin/ Edit influences/ remove influence
weight your skin. (You can skip to 5:30)
Use the Component Editor (Windows/General Editors) for more precision and to bind complex body parts to one joint. As example; select all the vertices for the head (you may have to hide the joints for this, to avoid accidentally select them) and go in the Component Editor to “Smooth Skins”. Than select everything bellow “head” and type in 1. All the vertices are now 100% bind to the “head” joint.

click on the root Joint and change it’s X rotaten to -90
Export the model as DAE_FBX. (For Maya light: export as fbx and us another 3d Program (Blender) to convert the model farther into DAE)
Start Tower Unite, open the Editor, load the DAE file and pray to your god