3d studio help needed from a Pro w/ Symmetry tool (noob question)

svferro

I'm new to 3ds so probably a stupid question!

My friend has made a model for my game engine, and I'd like to modify it.

It's fully rigged, animated using bones. How can I symmetrically modify the body parts without destroying all his hard work? Whenever i try to edit the mesh, everything is detached and its like I have to re-rig from scratch.

I'd like to modify / scale parts, say the right hand, and have it automatically modify the right, etc..

Thanks in advance!!!!

TorQue[MoD]

You can't really. Once a mesh is skinned to a skeleton, if you make any changes to the model you'd have to re-skin it. Basically how it works is the skin modifier makes a list of all the vertices and which bone in the skeleton is going to influence them. So if you add an edit poly modifier to the model and then make any changes to the verts (add or remove any) then those verts won't be in the list anymore so they won't be attached to the skeleton.

If however all you want to do is move some verts around, then you could just "cut" (CTRL +X) the skin modifier off the top of the stack, move the verts around to make a different shape and then paste the modifier back on top. But if you move them anything more than very slightly, you're back to the same problem.

Finally if you move verts around and the model is textured, you're going to cause stretching of the UVs which will make the texture look terrible.

Basically put, you need to make all changes to the mesh before you texture and rig it. Btw this question had almost nothing to do with the symmetry tool :P

TorQue[MoD]

forum glitched and double posted. Ignore this one.

Mark Dygert

Editing the model after its been rigged is a dicey operation. But you can use the skinwrap modifier, target the original mesh (hopefully the verts are still roughly in the same place) and then convert to skin. Unlike load save skin weights, skin wrap uses the verts positions in world space instead of relying on the vertex numbers.

As for editing it symmetrically, hopefully the model is already symmetrical, then just edit it as normal. You might want to detach the hands and run symmetry on them if the torso or some other part has asymmetry.

poopipe

skinwrap is the only real option if you want to apply a symmetry modifier - it'll require some manual tweaks afterwards but nothing too weird.

if you're just moving verts then doing it under a skin modifier is entirely safe provided your weights are baked down but you can't really work symmetrically.

or...

if you're feeling cunning and/or you're likely to be making iterative changes then you can use a morpher under skin and then use the morph mirroring trick documented here

http://www.3dtotal.com/tutorial/3d_studio_max/head_modeling_mirroring_morph_targets/head_modeling_mirroring_morph_targets_01.php

to generate symmetrical morph targets containing your changes.

this allows you to keep everything "live" and work non-destructively