Skinning and weighting in 3dsmax??
polycounter lvl 10
Coming from Maya, I am a little bit appalled with 3dsmax skinning. The CAT rig seems very awesome but the weighting part is just complicated. In Maya, there is the heat map skinning and now the geodesic voxel binding in maya which speeds up rigging. U can even place bones in the centre of ur models using a mode (can't remember the name).
Isn't there something like heat map or geodesic voxel in 3dsmax?
Isn't there something like heat map or geodesic voxel in 3dsmax?
Replies
www.scriptspot.com should have it.
It contains a heat map or colorized display of what part of the mesh is affected by each bone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyytEiB-1Ug
Those the script do something like this vid? In Maya as soon as u bind the skeleton to the mesh, u get good deformations right away. If u were to rig a character, which do u prefer:
CAT or biped in 3dsmax?
It's unlikely you'll find this in older scripts such as Skin or Die.
I prefer Biped for many reasons.
One of which is.. When posing out a character, nothing will come close to the speed that biped provides. The seamless ability that Bipeds' bi-directional constraints help to provide posing a character much more efficient than CAT. Along with the ability to alter the pivot points on the hands and feet so easily, makes it an easy win for me. I could go on and on... but I"ll wrap it up by saying Biped is bullet proof. I've yet to break that rig or have had a scene crash because of it.
Also it seems the skin or die documentation link at the scriptspot website is broken.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCBx8MjEvvo
This demonstrates the heat map bind skin method in Maya. With this, u get good deformations on the fly. Its sad Maya is tailored towards animation than 3dsmax.
I tried looking up tutorials of how to use the script u mentioned but sadly couldn't find any.
Envelopes are used to set the radius of the bones influence on the surrounding mesh. That's all. -Look up 3dsmax, Envelopes for more documentation.
Skin or die is only a tool that helps you fine-tune the weighting on your mesh. The documentation isn't that important. If you were to install it, the dialogue prompts are more than enough to get by
One more question, is there a way u can revert back to bind pose after moving ur biped bones around without keyframing them?
It's called 'Figure Mode' Looks like a stickman type icon.
Found under the motion panel-> Biped
You can 'save' and 'load' figure poses ( or bind poses)
Another way,
You can go under Copy/Paste
Copy your 'Pose', (not posture) before moving any bones around.
Then paste the 'Pose' back on the character when you want him to go back to a default pose
http://youtu.be/WpLohd3bojI
BonesPro is an alternative to the skin modifier.
http://youtu.be/qywFClKbbME
I'm always on the outlook for innovative scripts
Cheers