"lhand_tag_bone not found"

[LightNinja]

Well, is the first time that assimilate shows me this: "lhand_tag_bone not found" but that bone is in the model, so, what the hell i have to do?

[Psyk0Sith]

Here's a quote from myself:

 

"If you get an error message saying some "bone" cannot be found, it means that bone shouldnt have any weights assigned to it, BUT it is still included in the bones list, carcass will not find bones if they are not added in the bones list but there are some exception, see "specific weighting"."

 

If you are exporting for JA read this:

http://www3.sympatico.ca/psykopat/tutorials/jk3faq.htm

[LightNinja]

i tryed that but it still says the same dont know why the hell it happen with this model and not with the others i've done (is for JO)

[way]

Originally posted by LightNinja

i tryed that but it still says the same dont know why the hell it happen with this model and not with the others i've done (is for JO)

I got the same problem, and dont know why:(

 

@ Psyk0Sith: I read what you said and tried it, but even if I link this bone to my hand, I got this Error

[keshire]

If your using this for JA the bone should be lhang not lhand. If your using this for JO, you don't need that bone at all.

[way]

Originally posted by keshire

the bone should be lhang not lhand.

Yeah, excuse me.. didnt read it well.

 

I dont know why I cant assimilate the "lhang_tag_bone"

[Psyk0Sith]

Is this how you setup your hand tags?:

 

The l_hand and r_hand tags have to be weighted to the l_hang and r_hang bones.

[keshire]

Correct. Those hang bones are what rotate your saber in the hand. The saber model bolts to the hand tags. The hand tags move with the hang bones and wala. Spinny saber fun. Otherwise whenever those bones move the saber won't move with it. As seen with JK2 models not having true 2 saber support.

[darthviper107]

Well, I think this is your problem.

 

In JA that bone is called the l_hang_tag_bone which is linked to the left hand tag.

 

In JO it is called the l_hand_tag_bone, so all you have to do is change the name, it doesn't really mean it can't find the bone it's just that the bone isn't used with JO.

[LightNinja]

Ok, but im just surprised cuz i used that JO skelleton some times more, like 3 times and the error didnt was shown..

[RomulusClone]

ok. so i was getting this same error, then tried to follow the advice of you guys. maybe i'm just stupid, but it still wasn't working for me. so, as keshire said "If your using this for JA the bone should be lhang not lhand. If your using this for JO, you don't need that bone at all" soooo.... i just deleted them.

 

now assimilate is giving me an error: " 'torso_cap_r_arm_off' has no weights"

 

does this mean i shouldn't have done that? do i have to apply a skin modefier to the cap? if so, do i add a bone to it? if so, which?

 

i'm truly sorry, but this whole thing is confusing me! i've been reading Psyk0's awesome tutorial and FAQ and stuff, but it's still not working right. i know i'm doing something SMALL that's wrong, i just cant figure out what! ARGGH! frankly, i don't truley understand what tags and bolts and bones even do! *sigh*

 

please help us, keshire and Psyk0, you're our only hope.

[Chairwalker]

Well apparantly torso_cap_r_arm_off was weighed to the bone you removed,

so now all you need to do is weigh it unto another bone.

[Psyk0Sith]

you shouldnt have deleted that bone, here's how it's weighted for JO:

 

"How to correctly weight the saber/force powers' bones and tags

 

This is by no means the official method, but i never had any problems with force powers or saber movement. That's my method, feel free to experiment.

 

1.For the left hand: the "lhand_tag" bone is not deforming any vertices, but it is still added to the bones list, remove any verts that are influenced by it. I usually weight the "bolt_l_hand" tag to the mc5 bone.

 

2.For the right hand: the "bolt_r_hand" is weighted only to the "rhang_tag_bone" the "rhang_tag_bone" is NOT part of any bone hierarchy (means its not added to the right hand's bone list)"

 

The error reported by carcass is pretty straight forward. Caps are like all other meshes, they need to be weighted in the same manner as their parent mesh...read my skin modifier tutorial carefully. So yeah you need to add the skin modifier and link it to it's corresponding parent mesh.

 

Tags are pretty much like bolts, they are used to define a bounding box around the character, you can also "bolt" objects on them, useful if you want weapons .

 

Bones are what make animation possible, when compiling the weight info you have on each vert will be transfered to your GLM.

[RomulusClone]

ok. Psyk0, you said,

 

"1.For the left hand: the "lhand_tag" bone is not deforming any vertices, but it is still added to the bones list, remove any verts that are influenced by it. I usually weight the "bolt_l_hand" tag to the mc5 bone.

 

i had deleted that bone since it was on the list of "to delete" in your JK3 FAQ:

 

"Q:Which bones were, or should be, removed from the old JO skeleton?

 

A:r_d1_j3

r_d2_j3

r_d3_j1

r_d3_j2

r_d3_j3

r_d4_j3

r_d5_j1

r_d5_j2

r_d5_j3

l_d1_j3

l_d2_j3

l_d3_j1

l_d3_j2

l_d3_j3

l_d4_j3

l_d5_j1

l_d5_j2

l_d5_j3

mc5

ltarsal

rtarsal

 

Q:What are those bones?

 

A:Some finger bones, a hand bone and the "toes" of the skeleton.

 

Q:Is it safe to delete those bones from the skeleton?

 

A:Yes, or you can simply leave them out of the skin modifier.

 

Q:Why should i delete them?

 

A:Cuz i'm telling you to!!!! and the GLA doesnt have anims for them = useless

and will prevent you from compiling your character."

 

so, my "lhand_tag_bone" is not deforming any verts, because when i select and rotate it, nothing moves with it, so i'm assuming that means it's not deforming anything. since i deleted the mc5 bone, to what bone should i weight it to?

[RomulusClone]

thanks for that advice, Psyk0. you really are helping me little by little, and i appreciate it! well, after adding a skin modifier to all the caps the same as their corresponding parent meshes, the bones in the hands still don't move when i select and move the pelvis. they are:

 

rd1_eff

rd2_eff

rd3_eff

rd4_eff

rd5_eff

ld1_eff

ld2_eff

ld3_eff

ld4_eff

ld5_eff

 

just for grins, i exported the .xsi and then imported that .xsi into max and saw that the polygons are invisable, or reversed. accoring to Mac D's Addendum to SpaceMonkey's tutorial, he says:

 

"To make sure your model is alright, you’ll have to check it. Start a new project in max and import the root.xsi you just made. If your model looks alright and nothing seems out of place, congratulations. You can go to the next part.

 

But most likely you’re not so lucky; some model parts may have moved, and some (probably the same ones which have moved) have their normals inverted (i.e. the polygons look black).

 

Note which bits are out of place. They are that way because those bits have been either mirrored or scaled. Max remembers that information, and that is what confuses the xsi exporter. So we’ll have to get rid of that extra information.

 

Now open your max file (the one you saved just before exporting, preferable the one which you saved before setting up the hierarchy). Select all the meshes, bolts and tags which were screwed up. While they’re selected, go to the utilities tab (the tab with the hamer icon, on the menu’s to the right of the viewports) and press the “reset xform” button. Then press the reset “reset selected” button which appears underneath it.

 

If you have a hierarchy in place, you see that some bits move out of place. This is because they are linked to a mesh which has it’s xform reset, and this change is propagated through the hierarchy chain. Now you understand why you had to save before you linked stuff J.

 

Now go to all the bits which were wrong. Go through them seperately. In each case, go to the stack. Now, if you want to save the weighting you’ve done (and you do) select the skin modifier and drag it above the xform modifier. Then right click the xform modifier in the stack and click on ‘collapse to’ ( NOT collapse all!) in the roll out.

Do this for every object you reset the xform for.

 

Finally you’ll have to resetup the hierarchy. And export the max file as root.xsi again."

 

i did all of this, and still the polygons are reversed, the rhand_tag_bone thing is still not working, and i can't even get assimilate to go throught it once with out errors. i don't know why i can't do it, you guys probably think i'm stupid or something. i'm getting discuraged, but i don't give up easily.

[Psyk0Sith]

Dont think i exported my first character in a single try...i had my share of errors believe me.

 

As for deleting the mc5 bone, that's for JA only, you dont have to modify the skeleton for JO.

 

bones with _eff are never added to the skin modifier, they are just "end" bones they can be used to animate so dont mind them.

 

The damn Xform issues: there's a paragraph in the tutorial about that. Usually when i'm done with the basic mesh, i attach everything together and apply a reset xform modifier to fix any potential errors. Then i align the character's pivot point to the stupid triangle off and apply another xform modifier.

 

Fixing inverted normals once the mesh has been weighted is another issue.

[ksk h2o]

I end up tweaking my meshes a lot once they are segmented, mapped and weighed.... of course this leads to a lot of mirroring, and hence a lot of xform errors.

 

The problem with xform is that the reset applied to an arm will carry through the hierarchy. So now I have it down to a methodology. When editing arms, legs, If I don't use the symmetry from the modifier stack and mirror-copy the mesh, I apply an xform to it BEFORE linking it to anything or re-weighing it.

 

I haven't tried x-forming the whole mesh itself since just seeing the effects of this on one body part makes me scared to even try it witht he rest. Dont forget to SAVE before touching that xform button... the effects of that deadly thing are NOT undoable and if you mess up, it will be faster to restore than to fix the mess up.

[keshire]

And if you think this skeleton stuff is hard for meshes. Then you haven't even touched the tip of that iceberg.

 

I rank confusion on this scale.

 

*skins (all you need is the paint program)

*sabers (no weighting what so ever)

*characters (weighting to a current skeleton)

*New skeletons (This requires dipping into animation and compiling into gla's)

*Animation merging (AHHHHHHHH)

 

Once you get to that last one you can be officially considered nuts. But at least you generally know what your talking about.

[ksk h2o]

Yea.. I tried to ADD some bones to Corto's skeleton (the tail bones) and while I got the bones in there. For the life of me I couldn't get them to link up to the leg bones in an IK hierarchy... It was fine for weighing but NOT fine for animating.

 

Once I'm done with the skinning of my latest project, I'll be looking at the wonderful animatable skeleton you provided to see weather I can create (or re-create) accurate kendo style saber animations.

 

I've been looking at the Saber Swing Animation sets in both enums and modview, and I think I understand the way they are set up pretty well. It will be ANNOYING to make all the transition animations but not that hard. I think the hardest part will be creating good quality sword-swing animations.

 

About the part where you put skinning in the lowest difficulty level... well.. it doesn't work like that for me unfortunately. I find it a LOT easier to create models and rig them (more fun to model imo too) than to create high quality textures. I'm almost done pulling my hair out while trying to create realistic light effects, metal textures, shines, cloth textures, cloth folds, cloth stiching textures, etc etc... my newly acquired graphic tablet is coming in handy with it's pressure sensitivity but it sure is tough to paint near photo quality textures like ravens skins. =(

[RomulusClone]

ok, that helps guys. i merged the mc5 bone back in from a previous save (just in case). and as for the xform factor, i'm at the stage of fixing inverted normals once the mesh has been weighted now. oops. oh well, the learning curve is tought for the first time, but like with anything, you get better with practice.

 

keshire, lol, yeah, that's why i haven't even started to do animation stuff, i know how hard it is! i mean i look at Duncan_10158's AT-AT and Droideka animations, and i think, "WOW, he's way ahead of me!" but for now i'll leave that stuff up to you experts! funny thing is, i do 3d animation for a living! but i'm just now getting into game modding, so i still have a lot to learn. i mean, there's tons of awesome people out there.

 

on a somewhat related matter, i started a new post asking if anyone wanted to take a look at my max file and maybe could tell what i am doing wrong:

 

http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=126042

 

thanks y'all