Transfer bone weights?

Keytotruth

Hey there. As the title says, I've been meaning to find a way to be able to use the bone weights from one model to another in 3DS Max.

What I want to do is basically scale a certain model and its skeleton that is already skinned.
However, I need to remove the the skin modifier before scaling and then do the whole skinning again, so I thought that if there was a way to just copy the bone weights I could save a lot of time.

Is it possible to export the bone weights to a file and apply them to a different model? (In my case it the same model but scaled, so it should be no problem.)

I looked around some forums looking for an answer, but the only thing that could work was using the Skin Wrap modifier but when I tried it didn't work out so good.

Anyways, it would be awesome if you guys could give me some pointers on how to do this.

Thank you in advance. (I also hope I placed this thread in the right sub-section.)

Mrfred

try using the skin utilities in the tools section ( check the help about how to use it) I don't have to use it that often, so I always forgot how to use it, but it's pretty simple.

Skin data will create a clone of your mesh and bake the skin information on each vertices. It won;t be animatable tho.

What's cool with the skin data is that you can have sevral pieces, like a torso, arm, legs, and then merge them all to create a full skinned body

cw

you can save out your weights by saving the envelope file in the skin modifier, or by using the 'skinutils' in the utility tab to store the bone weights in a mesh. In either case, you reapply the weights after scaling your model, should all work perfectly. Scaling the skeleton might be a ballache depending on your engine, but there are ways to sort this as well.

Good luck!

Keytotruth

cw wrote: »

you can save out your weights by saving the envelope file in the skin modifier, or by using the 'skinutils' in the utility tab to store the bone weights in a mesh. In either case, you reapply the weights after scaling your model, should all work perfectly. Scaling the skeleton might be a ballache depending on your engine, but there are ways to sort this as well.

Good luck!

I'm currently using UDK, so I can't do bone scaling directly on a model that is already skinned, that's why I need to do this. I tried copying the envelope data from the original unscaled model, but when I select the new scaled model it just doesn't allow me to paste the data. The button appears grayed out.
Also, I tried skinutils as well, which I'm guessing it gets all the bone data so you can transfer it to another model, but it made my 3DS Max crash. Isn't there a way to export it as an actual file or something?

cw

In the skin modifier there is the option to export skin weights to an .env file. It might be under 'advanced' Check the docs for the details. It's totally doable.

Keytotruth

cw wrote: »

In the skin modifier there is the option to export skin weights to an .env file. It might be under 'advanced' Check the docs for the details. It's totally doable.

Thank you! It worked perfectly doing it that way. I didn't even know that that option was there.
You guys can close the thread already if you want.