Insert Modeling/import Questions Here!

[sithlord-II]

with the skin modifier, apply a plain grey texture to the model you are gonna setup for the skeleton (helps you see the weights in textured mode...

then go into Paint Vertices function of Skin modifier

much easier...

[DeepFish><>J]

any word on any tutorials coming our way, or when Raven is going to release their real official SDK with a lot of explanations ?

[DeepFish><>J]

one more question.... for skin modifier, i have to select a proper bone for each and every piece of the model (since its broken into different parts), right? so i select a l_leg object, apply a skin modifier to it, then add that particular bone which is inside that part of the mesh, and edit the envelopes to weighten the verteces... but im thinking, is it possilbe to just just attach all the body parts to hips, im talking about "attaching" not linking, since linking and hierarchy part is all done, so if i attach everything to hips, then i can just select the entire body as one single mesh, and apply all the bones at once to the whole mesh,a nd then just tweak each and every bone's envelopes to weighten all the vertecise.... can someone post or guide me to a good tutorial on the bones and skin modifier... coz i'm pretty much wondering in the dark right now... i have no idea on how do tweak those parameters, so that the mesh would look right when animated, example being that knee deforms as a real knee when the leg is bent, stuff like this... is there a good efficient way to weighten all the verteces and just animate the whole thing properly??? i know that this might be the most difficult part of the whole model creation, thats why im asking so many questions......

[sithlord-II]

ok well i'll give u a quick rundown..

 

ok you have the main skeleton to start with.

The pelvis of course applies to the hips part of the model. So i applied the Skin modifier to the hips, then added bones (pelvis, Rfemur bones, Lfemur bones, and the rtibia and Ltibia - my hips model went down below the knees a bit)

and i went to edit envelope for each bone within the skin modifier.

Within Edit Envelope, you choose Paint Vertices, and i try to set the threshold down around 10, unless i'm doing something large, like the cape, etc, or the torso.

and if you are in the textured mode, with a flat color on the part of the model, the model will show up colored, Blue for unweighted to the specific bone, and Red for completely weighted. Colors in between go Lighter Blue, Yellow, Orange, then Red.

Each mesh part can only have approximately 10 bones assigned to each part, which is a problem for doing hands, because if you've seen the skeleton, it requires 3 bones per finger, in addition to the hand bone, and mc5 or mc7 bone.That's 17 bones right there, not to mention if you need to attach the hand to the forearm...

will post after if u have any questions

[DeepFish><>J]

ok, i assigned a skin modifier to a leg mesh, picked all the needed bones for it, added them to skin, weighted the verteces, my mesh is all red, but when i move the bone, the mesh just stays in place... i thought it should move along with the bone.

[DeepFish><>J]

sithlord, spacemonkey, bloodriot, others, u've already done your models, and they work great, kudos to u all... can u guys point me towards books, tutorials on character animation? my mesh looks terrible when i move any bone with weighted verteces.... i looked in polycount's tutorial page, and i didnt find anything usefull in there... search on google didnt give me a lot of info either, i need some help here.

[The Librarian]

HI .. I'm quite new to modelling and when I tried to edit the root.xsi for kyle and compile it with assimilate/carcass, it told me that there was no weighting on the vertices of the stupidtriangle_off........................??

 

Is this meant to be weighted? If so could somebody please help me out?

 

Thanks

[sithlord-II]

deepfish, message me on ICQ 20568386, i'll try and help u out a bit

[spacermonkey]

Originally posted by The Librarian

HI .. I'm quite new to modelling and when I tried to edit the root.xsi for kyle and compile it with assimilate/carcass, it told me that there was no weighting on the vertices of the stupidtriangle_off........................??

 

Is this meant to be weighted? If so could somebody please help me out?

 

Thanks

 

you need to use the skin modifier and weight the mesh to the bones. You will also need to create a hierarchy in order for assimilate to convert the model into a glm.

[DarthCobra]

Model: "_humanoid"

 

Sequence "_HUMANOID": ASE/XSI/GLA file not found: "/d:/base/models/players/_humanoid/_humanoid.gla"

 

(1 faults)

 

I get this just from loading the humanoid model in assimilate... Is this normal maybe an error in the xsi i have. I tried doing this with the root.xsi that came with kyle.. and unless I use the model.car that was also included it always errors. What I have done is switched chiss and kyles head , just sort of for practice. Im sure i messed serveral other things up. But I thought id throw it up here.

 

P.S This thread should be sticky..

[sithlord-II]

well wtihin assimilate you should first goto Add Files, then add the humanoid.gla

the root.xsi file should be within the base/models/players/_humanoid/ dir

then goto the big B on the tool bar, for Build Model

[DarthCobra]

Well i have d:\base\models\players\_humaniod; with all the files from the humaniod dir carcas.exe and assimilate in there. Then I have d:\base\models\players\rebel; with just the xsi in there. I also put the xsi in the humaniod dir. And when i add files in assimilate and add the _humaniodl.glm it gives me errors about model not being there.

 

model file missing: "/d:/base/models/players/_humaniod/_humaniod.gla"

 

then it gives me notepad with the previous error that i posted. And on the assimate screen with the _humaniod branch extented

 

GLA: (frames: target 0, Count 0, Loop -1, Speed 20 ) _HUMANIOD ((BAD: _HUMANIOD))

 

I get this same error whether my exported xsi or the one included in the tools.

 

ok well im still gonna leave these errors here but i had my preferances set wrong /me fwaps himself

 

so the /d:/ was comming from a "/" in edit/preferance/quake dir when it didnt seem to need it.. I really hate it when its stupid stuff like that

 

If this works out ill report back on any progress. Ive seen several posts on switching heads and what not.

 

Long as im still here. So i guess ill assume that the glm export doesnt take any weights with it.

 

 

Stupid triangle has no weight blah blah.. im sure there will be more ... i seen a thread on this maybe its this one .. im gonna go read it though..

[DarthCobra]

oops pressed quote instead of edit

[DarthCobra]

onto my next weighing assimilate complaint.

 

Processing 'd:/base/models/players/_humanoid/root.XSI'

Processing meshes, LOD 0

Error: Vert (1) on mesh "*hips_cap_torso" has no weights

 

So im tryin to weight *hips_caps_torso. And normally the mesh seems to paint itself when weighted, it gives you some kinda yellow sheild to show that you have it selected or something. But i cant get this one to select or add a weight to or something. Someone had said something about manually selecting a vert and typing it a weight manually i think. Anywho .. im pretty stumped.

 

Ok so i finally managed to select vert 1 i think. Anywho there has just gotta be an easier way to do this? Anyone care to enlighten me??

[sithlord-II]

hm

not quite sure on that

i ran into a few errors like that

try using the paint weights from a different angle or something

[DarthCobra]

Well im just a total newbie in 3dsmax.. But i seem to have everything weighted. But i didnt seem to get everything linked properly.

 

Error: Model has 125 surfaces, but only 67 can be reached by recursing from surface 0 ('stupidtriangle_off')

 

You need to re-hierarchy this model correctly

 

These are the surface(s) not reachable from surface 0...

 

*l_leg_knee

*r_leg_knee

hips_torso

torso_l_shoulder

torso_r_shoulder

*r_hand

*r_hand

*r_hand_cap_r_arm

r_hand_inner_glove

*r_hand_cap_r_arm

*l_hand

*l_hand

*l_hand_cap_l_arm

l_hand_inner_glove

l_hand_cap_l_arm

hips_cap_l_leg_off

hips_cap_r_leg_off

hips_cap_torso_off

l_hand

r_hand

 

So im kinda lost now. I dont think i seen any of these in space monkeys hierarchy. But i think i saw them on that "Model Construction Conventions" anywho im gonna fiddle with this some more, any suggestions always welcome. I think im gettin close. Maybe i got some dupe tags in here from importing the model. Well i guess some of them are in there.. I must have unlinked or missed while multiple selecting. If im ranting too much in here plz tell me .. I just figured I'd post info in case someone else might be having same problems.

 

Ok 2 left

 

*l_leg_knee

*r_leg_knee

 

I dont see these im my object list anywhere

[spacermonkey]

all those parts where in that hierarchy tute I posted a while back. I dont think you've been linking them properly.

 

edit: excluding a few obvious parts such as r_hand_inner_glove - but its just common sense as to where you link parts like that.

[DarthCobra]

Ok 2 left

 

*l_leg_knee

*r_leg_knee

 

I dont see these im my object list anywhere

 

Thought id move that down here since spacemonkey was lookin

 

Ok all these *blah is really messin with me. Im assuming there all bolts i found them linked to r/l_leg im assuming.

 

Error: Model has 125 surfaces, but only 87 can be reached by recursing from surface 0 ('stupidtriangle_off')

You need to re-hierarchy this model correctly

These are the surface(s) not reachable from surface 0...

 

ok. so now its not listing any of them at all but i guess 33 are still unlinked. Well as if this wasnt hard enough Spose I should unlink and relink all. If I leave them linked still will linking them again mess it up. Are there really 125 surfaces listed in that hierarchy? Well I counted about 77 and the eyes mouth stuff i added. Im guessing i didnt have all my groups selected correctly when i linked

[spacermonkey]

as a test - select everything all your segements and tags. Then link them to the hips, then link the hips to stupid triangle off.

Then try exporting it. You will need to fix the hierarchy later because you'll end up with strange dismemberments.

 

and yes * = bolt in assimilate.

[DarthCobra]

Processing 'd:/base/models/players/_humanoid/root.XSI'

XSI import failed, code = 6210 (file 'd:/base/models/players/_humanoid/root.XSI'

 

How about this one ... restarted yet again.. Did everything correctly far as i know. I followed all the bone connected from modveiw.

[sithlord-II]

the 6210 means you have done something to the model it does not like

ie. delete or add vertices to a model after a skin modifier

etc

my recommendation is to go thru your model

and try deleting parts you have recently modified (ONLY TEMPORARILY!!!) then exporting your model

if you don't get the error message say, after you delete the left hand, you know that its because of that item...

[DarthCobra]

Actually on that one i had just got done removing what i thought were lots of dupe bolt tags.

 

On another note I got my strompilot with rebel head into game. The skin is all wacked and the lightsaber seems to be hangin on the floor...

 

BUT I GOT IT IN THE GAME!!!

 

Definate progress. Anywho .. I see there is a modeling tutorial posted now. Hopefully no more questions. And mabye i can help to answer some:)

[DarthCobra]

OK.. If i weight and connect to bones to the mesh before i do the hierarchy. Could that be giving me that error. Ive taking the head from the reborn and tried putting it on tavion and other models. I seem to be getting this error everytime. And that the only thing i can think of.

[sithlord-II]

its possible but i don't think i ran into that

what i'd recommend is before you apply any skin modifier, make sure you have it linked properly

but i think i was able to do so without much issue

[fuc847]

2 quick q's:

 

1.) do you HAVE to HAVE caps? (like actually have parts named " cap_ dadaa" , can i just ignore it and leave it invicible in the game?)

 

2.) is there a way to modify the bones, like expand the shoulder width bones etc. since i'm making a non standard humanoid model