Need help collapsing or removing bones to reduce bone count in 3DS Max
Hey guys, I got a quick question, is there a way to collapse bones/weights into one another using 3DS Max? say I have the following bone structure: R_Clavicle
Twist_1
Twist_2
R_Upperarm
If I want to remove Twist_1 and Twist_2 from the bone set as well as their weights, how would I go about doing that? I obviously can't just delete them because it will mess up the weights and the model. I need to reduce the bone count of a model I have for optimization but I'm not sure how to do that, any help would be seriously appreciated!
Replies
Do the twist bones have any childen bones? That will make things more complicated since you can't just delete them.
Simplifying a rig is usually done by retargeting from the more complex rig to a new simpler rig. You could try doing this in Max but it's historically not very robust, Skin Wrap is worth looking into. Or use another tool like Motion Builder or Maya HIK.
You could also try the options in Skin to reweight the vertices to ignore the bones before you delete them.
Iirc manipulating bone weights is pretty painless in maxscript and you have access to the skeletal topology in the skin modifier. Wouldn't be a particularly difficult job to script I don't think