Model Requests? (or help)

[Fooli]

Um... yes. If I understand the question.

Normally when you use bones, you have two parts of the model you're working with. The mesh, and the skeleton. The mesh is the bit you want to use in game. The skeleton's just there to control the mesh, and you link the two together via the Skin modifier (if we're talking Gmax).

So, standard approach is to make the mesh; make the skeleton; add the Skin modifier to the mesh and configure it so it includes all the bones in your skeleton; play with the weighting etc; and finally, do your animation.

Once you've got the animation ready, you just export the mesh, not the skeleton (ie, use "export selected", not "export". You'll need to do that for each frame of animation, in the normal way.

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[fhko]

Thanks fooli, you're always so quick in responding.

[fhko]

For some reason when I try to run my screen recorder during a particular animation of my robot gmax crashes. It's a shame, because it's my best work yet. Any ideas on ways to fix it?

[fhko]

When I try to load the mesh(es) into lithunwrap after "'export seleted"ing I get the message saying 'no geometry found'.

[Jayecifer]

I stoled your geometry.

[fhko]

The starbuck model is kicking my crude modeling troubleshooting skills' butt. When I export it, it ends up decapitated in lith. In trying to right the problem I scaled the model down which made the portions controlled by IK solvers huge in relation to the rest of the model.

Sometimes I think bones are worth the trouble.

Edit: okay, now I'm sure it's doing it on purpose, every time I move the model a little and reload it into tempest a different combination of the limbs are enlarged.

Oh fooli, fuhrer of frustratingly infuriating figures, lend me your assistance.

[Fooli]

Erm... hmm. Well, maybe tell me what you're trying to do and if I can I will. Sounds to me like you need a basic working starbuck to start playing with in Gmax, yeh? Getting it out of the MC probably ain't the best way to do that. Maybe I can send you something a bit more helpful.

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[fhko]

I managed to successfully reverse engineer the starbuck model into gmax with bones. Except I can't get the lousy thing to load into tempest and/or lithunwrap correctly.



The models were loaded from the same file without alteration by me in between. If I were to reload the model into tempest...I get another random combination of huge and normal limbs (such as all but the [anatomical] right arm being huge). Sometimes I get lucky and the model loads with all normal limbs. But it would be nice not to have to go through this.

[Fooli]

Still not quite sure how you've done this, but it's almost certainly a transforms problem.

So, you've exported each frame of starbuck into Gmax? Or have you exported one frame (maybe Standing or something) then built a skeleton, skinned the mesh to it, and now you're re-animating it?

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[fhko]

I just exported whatever the standard frame for the model is (in the midst of walking). Imported into gmax, moved it around a little bit to make the bone-rigging easier, added bones, tried to test to make sure I actually could export the mesh (since I couldn't using my robot model),

made it into tempest okay but lith had a problem with the head above the jawline being well below the characters feet (I assume similar issue as with my space station),

so I tried scaling down the model and exporting it, this took care of the decapitation but now I have the scaling issue.

I can't really do a 'collapse transform' on it passed the skin modifier because the mesh loses its connection to the bones upon its use. Making exporting the whole animation incredibly difficult. I would have to collapse every potential keyframe of the animation and save it as a separate file.

Epiphany: I think the real problem lies in not having the bones Xformed...but as soon as I try that the bone-mesh relationship goes all screwy likely due to the scaling I did on it. IN other words...my model is hopelessly messed up.

*sigh*

I might give up on bone related modeling, at least for now.

[Fooli]

You shouldn't need to transform bones to get it working. Just start with a transforms-reset mesh, build the skeleton, skin it, job done. Always finalise the mesh before starting the skinning process.

I've sent you a better starting point (as .3ds and .gmax).

No idea why Lith would decapitate the head: sounds like there's a maximum scale it can deal with, so maybe scale down the mesh first (then reset transforms on it and collapse it again) before building the skeleton.

Bones are a pain, it's true. Especially in Gmax (the full 3ds Max has a nice thing called character studio which does a lot of the hard work for you). But, a simple skeleton that works.. it's worth it for the animation. There are plenty of tutorials (and many sample skeletons, even for Gmax (check the battlefield mod sites etc) that'll help.

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[Jayecifer]

I'm just going to pop in here to state that Fhko's skills are improving exponentially.

[Mit]

indeed.. looking good, fhko.
having to deal with a human with half a massive pair of legs is, i believe, one of the key initiation stages in becoming a fully fledged 3d artist :]

[fhko]

Thanks for the pep talk guys...I knew there was a reason why I would never leave you...

The bones will meet their match, but not for a while...I want to get to work on putting together the first two levels of my world...which needs much simpler models...I'll wait till I at the point where a metal-druid-exo-skeleton is needed for my next attempt.

Assuming I don't get any super-interesting gifts to fool around with, I plan to spend most of my winter break modeling and world building.

Model anyone?



Boat Construction and Texture

[Fooli]

On the boat construction model:

Nice concept! For future reference (constructive criticism time). The chunks of wood aren't mapped properly... The way I'd build it is:

- Make one of your planks/ribs/whatever they are, as a plain cuboid

- Map it thoroughly. A cuboid can be box mapped or cylinder mapped. Just as long as you've got all the faces represented and nicely joined together on the uvw map

- once you're happy with it, then bend it into shape, and replicate to create the other planks/ribs etc. It's a darn sight easier to bend a mapped shape than to map a bent one :) Once you've replicated the shape and created the boat etc, you can even go back to individual planks/ribs, select their mapping coords (edit mesh/select element...then unwrap again) and move them on the uvw map, so you can texture them a bit differently


On skeletons:
It's the single most annoying thing (also the most satisfying). One thing you might try - if it's the sorta thing that interests you - is creating a robot or android model, just using shapes for limbs etc that link together. You can even apply IK (if Gmax does that)... basically, don't bother with the skinning bit, just build a model that works as a skeleton. Nice way to play with animations for humanoids without getting involved in the whole messy skinning process. The android avatar model is like that (it's crap, but in my defence it's years old now). Also the mechs etc.

Anyway, here's to a modeltastic new year :)
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[Jayecifer]

Can we have a pizza party this year? :-p

[fhko]

if it makes me look better...I did actually map then bend and replicate the 'ribs' of the ship. I just choose not to refine the mapping because I'm lazy and it's a rather simple model anyway.

Thanks for the robot modeling advice fooli, I'll look into how well it works tomorrow.

Is there anyway to stop the IK limb solver from doing weird, unnatural looking rotations as you move the limb around? Incorporating the swivel feature into the animation can't always compensate for all the buggy-ness.

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If we can't get pizza, do we at least get U T-shirts?

[Fooli]

IK:

I've always found it a bit weird, and to be honest I'm no expert. However... the answer should be yes. You can set constraints for bones that IK then listens to. So for a leg, say... you'd constrain how it rotates so the knee didn't bend backwards. It also helps if you understand the difference between the different IKs (HI, HD, Limb) which... I've forgotten. If I get time to think about this later today I'll maybe try and build a skeleton and see what's what.

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[fhko]

A humorous little building of no real purpose:



Toy Smasher and Texture

[morbydvisns]

well i threw it on was going to use it as a hurd processor.. any way to turn the lil man shape thing into a box that just gets smashed to amuch shorter verson if the box? =)

ill fix me up a little texture job on this