Attaching meshes for animation

MikeF

Hey everyone, this is my first post here, i've been lurking around for a few weeks now, and i've got a question that's finally gotten me to register.

While working in 3dsmax (5.1), i want to attach 3 seperate meshes each with their own bones and skin modifier, but when i try to attach by just using the attach button under edit mesh, the mesh that it inherits looses its skin modifier.

Is there any way around this without having to re-skin the meshes that it inherits?

Thanks for the help in advance.

FatAssasin

I was going to say you might be able to use the "Extract Skin Data To Mesh" utility, but that's for Max 6.

There are scripts that will save out skin data, but I don't know if they will work with your extreme example here.

Did you plan on attaching all three meshes from the beginning, or was this something you thought you needed to do after they were all rigged and skinned? My best advice is, in the future, don't do that.

If you just want them to all to move as one object, link the skeleton's root bones to a dummy object and then move the dummy around.

MikeF

Well, i've got two of the same models that use a fairly complex rig, and they need to be attached with each other and one other model, so i figure there would be some way to at least preserve the skin modifier on the cloned model/rig when i attach.

Eric Chadwick

I use 5.1 here, and there are some freebie scripts that let you save and load weights based on vertex positions, instead of just vertex IDs. Might help you.

Kees Rijnen's Bio Skin (requires Editable Mesh base)
http://www.keesrijnen.com/

Andre Hotz' Skin Or Die (requires Editable Poly base)
http://mitglied.lycos.de/bogi1976/

Grant Adams has three scripts here
http://members.optushome.com.au/ghra/scripts.htm#max4
And BTW an improved Enveloping tool here...
http://www.rpmanager.com/freeTools.htm

Chuggnut's SkinTools
http://www.chuggnut.com/scripts/skintools/skintools.html

MikeF

sorry to bump this thread after so long, i havnt been able to post for a while. Thanks for all those links, defenintely gonna help out in the future, but i'm still having a bit of a problem here.

I'l try and be extreemely specific now.
I have two hands and a rifle for a first person animation, and i already have one hand riged, so i just wanted to copy the other and attach them both to the rifle which i will rig afterwards. So i'm still not able to attach all 3 without loosing my weights (even after trying all those tools). I'm not sure how it works in most FPS engines for this kind of thing, but for the one i'm working with in particular you can only have one mesh before exporting. I could always just attach everything then rig it all as one peice, but then i'd have to re weigh everything for each new weapon i do.

Eric Chadwick

Well, first I'd make sure the game supports the funky bone rig you're using.

I haven't tried loading multiple weights from different Skin mods together into a single mesh, but I don't think those tools will do that either.

Probably your best bet is to simply save the weights for the mesh that took the longest to weight in the first place, attach the other meshes to it, then reload the weights using the Vertex Position option instead of Vertex ID, since the IDs will have changed. Then manualy re-weight the new verts.

Or get a coder to write a one-off for you.

CrazyButcher

what are you exporting to ?
normally you could "collapse" things more easily in code while exporting the file. So the simplest way is telling the coder who wrote the exporter to just collapse everything when he saves the file.

because writing a plugin that "collapses" stuff in 3dsmax is harder then just "writing collapsed data" to a file format, cause the data afterwards just needs to work witn the file format specs and not 3dsmax itself

FatAssasin

If the coder going to make any changes, change the exporter, or engine, to support multiple meshes. I think that's the best long-term solution. Having to make the guns and arms one mesh, for every weapon, doesn't make any sense.

CrazyButcher

yeah especially if you consider texture useage, one mesh would mean hands texture + gun texture in a single texture. If the engine supports multiple materials per model, then eventually it does support multiple meshes per model, cause the engine needs to split the model up into meshes for materials anyway...