Psynex Posted January 17, 2003 Share Posted January 17, 2003 I have a very small number of bones that Carcass says it can't find. They're certainly there in my max file, but apparently not in the XSI. Any ideas why only some would be missing?...I just double checked to make sure they were assigned to a segmented part of the mesh; I don't think they all have at least one vertex assigned to them though (should that matter?). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psyk0Sith Posted January 17, 2003 Share Posted January 17, 2003 Some bones need to be assigned to the mesh but NO weights on the vertex. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ksk h2o Posted January 17, 2003 Share Posted January 17, 2003 One of my biggest problems was a missing hand bone during assimilation. I had the hierarchy set up correctly so that was not the problem (if the bone isn't in the correct hierarchy it will be cast out). It turns out I was weighing the Left hand Tag to the l_hand bone, and the tag was supposed to be weighed to the mc_something instead. You should do as Psyko said, look at the missing bones and make sure you did not weigh them to a tag or a part of the mesh which you shouldn't have. It might be helpfull to say which bones are missing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psynex Posted January 17, 2003 Author Share Posted January 17, 2003 I'm at work now, so I can't take a look at the assimilate error(s) now, but from memory I know one of the bones is lhand_eff because I double checked that one to make sure it was assigned to the mesh. It had 2 blue vertexes with it. Now I thought that blue meant there was no bone assigned to a vertex, or is that only in static assigning? If it's only for static assignment then that small amount of weight might be what's causing the problem. Most of the bones that were listed had an EFF at the end of the name. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ksk h2o Posted January 17, 2003 Share Posted January 17, 2003 the ...eff bones are for movement and should not be weighed to any verts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psyk0Sith Posted January 17, 2003 Share Posted January 17, 2003 Originally posted by Psynex ...It had 2 blue vertexes with it. Now I thought that blue meant there was no bone assigned to a vertex, or is that only in static assigning? If it's only for static assignment then that small amount of weight might be what's causing the problem. Blue means it has deformation if you want no deformation then you dont assign anything, something like 0.01 would still be considered as a weighted vert. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psynex Posted January 18, 2003 Author Share Posted January 18, 2003 sounds good to me. I didn't think my problem was that big. Also, how can I weight verts using a value like 50%? I haven't seenan option for it, but it's probably staring my right in the face. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psyk0Sith Posted January 18, 2003 Share Posted January 18, 2003 When you add weight to only 1 bone you cant add 50% only 100%...to have 50/50 you need to have that vertex shared by two bones. You select the first bone, add 1.0 then select the other (with the same vertex still selected) then you can add 0.5. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psynex Posted January 19, 2003 Author Share Posted January 19, 2003 great. Ok, well, I've eliminated all but one of those errors. There is only one bone now causing me trouble and there are no verts weighted to it at all. It's bone "lhand_tag_bone". Same error as before "cannot be found" even though it is there and it is assigned to the left hand segment. I'm a bit baffled by it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psyk0Sith Posted January 19, 2003 Share Posted January 19, 2003 Like you said: lhand_tag_bone has no vertex assigned to it but is assigned to the hand hierarchy, make sure nothing is linked or weighted to it like tags for example and absolutely no verts. Just to make sure, select all the vertices of the hand and click "exclude verts" that way you know nothing's weighted to it (lhand_tag_bone). If this is what you did then it should be found...so i'm not sure what else's wrong. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psynex Posted January 20, 2003 Author Share Posted January 20, 2003 ah yea, it was a tag. So I resolved all the bone issues, then it yelled at me for the skins, so I remapped them to the same folder as the model (clearing that up), and now I'm getting missing vertex assignment as well as too many vertex assignment errors. I now see why compiling is such a pain. Thank you for your help Psych0. If after I eliminated these one-by-one vertex errors I have anymore problems you'll see this thread back at the top of the page. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psyk0Sith Posted January 20, 2003 Share Posted January 20, 2003 No problem, carcASS is a real pain...i always double check everything and still get a few errors. I'm glad i could help you out, hang in there! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psynex Posted January 20, 2003 Author Share Posted January 20, 2003 I did hang in there. Just after I posted that message, I successfully compiled a GLM. Many weighting issues to go back and fix though. Because of the bulk of the model (cartoon character) he doesn't deform like a normal human. His face was all smeared in some sequences, LOL! *EDIT* Blah! I tried the 50% weighting tip you gave my Psych0, but it didn't work. I removed all weighting then weighted one side of the cap area with 1.0, and painted the other half (seperate bone) with a .5. It did nothing. The verts are still red in color. One thing I didn't pay attention to is the caps themselves...howo do I weight the end of the arm if the cap has its own assignments from the halves of the arm? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psyk0Sith Posted January 21, 2003 Share Posted January 21, 2003 Hmm k i remember helping someone with that... Ok first dont mind the caps, weight the end of the arm like it should be weighted. The arm ---------- Only one bone: It all depends on where you chopped the arm , if only one bone can control the "seam" then you only weight to this bone. The shoulder and "chopped off" arm will both get 1.0 abs from the bone underneath. Two bones: Let's say you have two bones roughly meeting where the arm has been segmented. First select only the verts of the upper part's open edges (we'll call that the shoulder) weight with full abs to humerus, next, without deselecting your current verts, select the humerusX bone and type 0.5. You should end up with equal deformation, preventing the tearing of the arm. By moving the humerus/humerusX around, you will see right away if you've done it right. Fact: the only way to prevent tearing is to weight 0.5 to both of the meshes, you will never be able to make them move the same way if they dont share equal influence. The caps ----------- Since the caps are an extension of their parent mesh, they should be weighted in the SAME manner, or they will not follow each other and tear apart. A "seam" with ONE bone = your caps will get full abs. A "seam" with TWO bones = a cap sharing the same weight... that weight is always 0.5. A word of advice, dont paint the weights on, use the ABS spinner and type-in the weight you want. I've had some occasions where typing weights wouldnt change anything, i guess it's some kind of bug from the skin modifier, like the refresh thing. I had to "get out" of the bone selection or remove all weights from that bone and start over. If you still need help, let me know! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psynex Posted January 21, 2003 Author Share Posted January 21, 2003 ok, I can work with that, but I don't have humerous and humersousX on the same mesh segments. Will just reselecting the same verts again and giving them a .5 weight work? I'm going to test it out on my own, but max just crashed, and I could possibly receive an answer from you before it fully loads up again. *EDIT* Ok, I followed along with those instructions and it didn't help. Do both bones have to be on the same segment? I had two of them on the same segment; I abs 1.0 on the upper verts, then I selected the second bone like you said while the verts were still selected and the abs was already set to 1.0; I changed it to .5 then the verts weight changed from 1.0 to .5 so both bones ended up being .5; what's that about? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psyk0Sith Posted January 21, 2003 Share Posted January 21, 2003 could you take a screenshot (in wireframe) of the arm and shoulder segmentation so i can see how the bones are lined up? send it there: psykopat@geocities.com Maybe my explanations are not clear enough...not always easy when you dont have pictures to show what you mean. I'll start working on a tutorial. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psynex Posted January 21, 2003 Author Share Posted January 21, 2003 no I followed along pretty well, it's just that I might not have assigned the bones to the mesh the same way as you have in those areas. I will take some screenshots after I get out of my class tonight so you can see what I'm working with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psyk0Sith Posted January 22, 2003 Share Posted January 22, 2003 Ok, cool. I should have mentioned that...you have to assign an extra bone sometimes. I made a tutorial anyway, it's pretty basic so it wont help much. The 2nd part will deal with the caps and why 50/50 weighting is important. I figured this could help some people out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psynex Posted January 22, 2003 Author Share Posted January 22, 2003 The tutorial looks good. I wasn't too far off. I'm going to give it a shot using your example and if I can't get it I'll post screens of my layout. *EDIT* I checked the tut again, and it's not quite the same as what I was looking for. My problem is where 2 caps meet. I have it circled on the following picture...I also labeled the two bones that are seperated by the caps. Take a look Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psyk0Sith Posted January 22, 2003 Share Posted January 22, 2003 K, now i see why some of the stuff i said might not work as good for this situation. But i will add another section to the tutorial about the caps and 50/50 weighting. I usually segment the shoulder higher than that, so everything is either higher than the humerusX or right at the meeting of the two humerus bones. That shouldnt be a problem, but it's kind of hard to know how it will deform. Have you tried weighting everything to only humerusX? Both caps should have only humerusX assigned with 1.0 abs of course. Do the same for the verts at the end of the sleeve and the end of the arm... Move the bones around and check how it deforms. Your mesh could use a few more faces near the shoulder, it might look a bit weird when moving because of that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psynex Posted January 23, 2003 Author Share Posted January 23, 2003 Well, that seemed to work much better. The arm is now not floating around without the shoulder, but the deformation is a bit off. Boy, this is going to be a lot of work. Editing for JK2 really sucks! I miss Half-Life; it had the best system of editing for characters and weapons, and they were both almost the same. It's too bad Valve never updated the engine. Oh well. Thanks for your help. I'm off to adjust the weights and possibly rework some of the mesh. ****...as it is I didn't find out that if you wanted the UV coordinates of all the segments on the same BMP you have to map them THEN segment. Damn Tim Applbey for putting texturing at the end of the tutorial! I feel like pretty much have to start over. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psyk0Sith Posted January 23, 2003 Share Posted January 23, 2003 I've only exported 1 or 2 player models for Quake 3, it seemed a bit easier, never done anything for Half-Life so i dunno. If i had unreal 2k3 i guess i would have started exporting players for that game, but the very thought of a new export process is scary... UVW mapping is a pain when it's not done from the start, hope it'll be alright. If you need anything else just ask, i'll do my best to help you out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psynex Posted January 23, 2003 Author Share Posted January 23, 2003 I just wanted to pimp the power Half-life modding can flex: You create a mesh, texture it, assign it to a biped...yup biped, then you assign verts to the skeleton (the only downside to this is each vert only gets one bone assignment; no real weighting, but more control that way). After the character is rigged you export it as a reference file (file containing mesh, skeleton, and vert assignment information). Now the fun begins, you animate your character's movements. You can do walk cycles either in place, or along the ground plane (it doesn't matter because the compiler will take care of telling the engine how to deal with it). You save each animation as an SMD file (same as before only this file only contains the skeleton movement information and will be merged with the reference[mesh attached to skeleton] during compile). You write a simple text file that is used to tell the compiler where all the files are that belong in the model, then run it through the compiler and BAM. Fully edited, fully animated, character. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
razorace Posted January 23, 2003 Share Posted January 23, 2003 Yeah, but I bet you can't do dynamic, on-the-fly, animations with half-life. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psyk0Sith Posted January 23, 2003 Share Posted January 23, 2003 Kinda like Quake 3, slap a biped on it, create a few tags, and animate. Also had LOD support. That was pretty fun...but i'm starting to like the manual weighting(God did i just say that???), much more control over the character's skin. Once you get used to the system it gets easier...but still a time consuming task. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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