[3DS Max] Skin Modifier - Voxel Mapping doesn't work on "Shelled" or "Closed" surfaces?
Hello, I was hoping someone could shed some light on an issue I'm having in Max 2022+
In Max, whenever I close or shell a model, like say bandages around a characters arms, the Voxel in Skin modifier stops working or gets the wrong weights.
I tried using Heatmap instead, but that doesn't work either, it takes almost several minutes to process the skin and won't fully get it right (as in un-skinned vertices).
Basically the Skin will force the whole of the model to rig itself to the lowest bone origin (if hand or foot is the last bone, it will rig the whole mesh to that part). Removing bones doesn't solve the issue.
I even tried basic shapes, like a cylinder around a leg, as soon as a shell modifier is set, any attempt at using the Skin Modifier (old, fresh or even custom plugins ones) will stop working properly.
The only solution I found was to use Skin Warp, but that has it's own set of issues (breaking the rendering/material of the model, need to have normals locked, etc).
I can post a quick video if needed, but I was hoping in the meantime someone knew of a way to bypass this bug in Max, or if there is a way to get the old skinning tools back that did work in the past.
EDIT: Here is a Video if anyone knows a fix to this bug, although I have to say, I'm surprised with all the Cloth stuff out there nobody noticed this?
Replies
Have you reset the transform before skinning? Just checking...
Yep, I did everything to clean the mesh before doing any rigging to it, which was the frustrating part.
For what it's worth (I guess the problem is solved?), I was told at the 3DS Max Forums that this is intended function of Voxel skinning, even a little overlap (like cloth wrinkles) will break it, and it's intended for 1 way skinning of a mesh that isn't too complicated (human body, etc).
I was able to also gather that I should use Heat Maps instead for any kind of complex skinning, even though that didn't work in my case, because even Autodesk peeps forgot to mention that after a certain "scene size" (as in below CM's) , unlike Voxel, Heat Maps break completely, so I have to rescale the scene for them work.
Cheers in advance.
Why are you working at a tiny scale? Lots of things break, in lots of tools, at non real-world scales. Even if working on microscopic style content, it's wise to factor up massively.
It's related to modding games and such usually, since the middle-tools are community driven and very finicky (physics and such related to size), and I couldn't find ways to export assets in FBX format but make them smaller (I couldn't find a size thing for FBX for example).
I try to not change scene sizes too many times if possible, because of that.