Blender hints and tips
For information specific to using Blender in conjunction with IWTE for M2TW Battlemap Buildings please see Blender for IWTE.
This page consists of more general tips which may be suited to use of Blender for other aspects of Total War Modding. Information given is for Blender 2.8 unless otherwise noted.
Animated Models
Bone Assignment
Assigning vertexes to bones is achieved by 'weight painting' in Blender. If you need to limit the number of bones a vertex is assigned to, e.g. to a single bone for M2TW strat characters or RTW units, you can use "Limit Total" under the "Weights" menu, input the number of bones desired in the drop-down mini-menu that appears. To get Vertex Groups applied to new/imported piece of mesh, first make the mesh a child of the Armature parent, using one of the "Assign from Bones" options. If the automated process didn't get the desired result select the vertex group bone name that you want to assign to, and 'paint' the vertexes.
Animations
To start adjusting animations you need to be in "Pose Mode", to view the keyframes in the "Dope Sheet" section and be able to select bones easily, click the pose (running man) symbol in the side-bar, open "Viewport Display" and select "In Front".
Bone Constraints
Bones will generally follow the movements of their parent bone/s in the armature, to over-ride this behaviour, or temporarily change the parent relationship you can use "Bone Constraints" on individual bones.
You can impose a constraint only on certain keyframes by manipulating the "Influence" amount. 1.0 will give the constraint full influence and 0.0 will give no influence. To set for an individual keyframe, drag the blue time bar to the desired frame, type the desired number in the influence box then hover over the box and hit the shortcut key "i" to set that value. This can be used if you wish to have a weapon's bone linked to the hand bone for parts of the animation, but set down or stored against the torso for other parts.
Pictured below is an animation in .blend file with bone constraints applied.
Exporting via Collada will convert the movement paths obtained by the bone constraints to individual keyframe values (as shown in the picture under Animations above), that should then be useable in other programs that may not directly accept the constraint properties.
