Physique problems

Hollowmind

I started physiquing this mesh earlier this week. Now normally I would've been done with it by now but everytime I close it to work on it again later the file opens with the mesh looking something like this.



I haven't had this problem before. Has anybody else run into this and maybe knows how to fix it? It's been driving me nuts all week. I tried out skin but I don't like the tools as much as physique's.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

MoP

hmm, i've had this happen before.
what I do which seems to work, is right before saving the .max file, select all vertices and hit the "Lock vertices" button in Physique... or failing that you could export the .PHY file just before saving and closing Max, that way if it breaks on reload, you can simply re-import the .PHY file into the physique modifier.

That usually saved my ass in the past.

Hollowmind

I've tried that, too. When it first happened I had all the verts locked. Opened it again later to finish adjusting some weighting in the shoulders and it was fucked, although not as bad as in that pic, hehe. So I removed the physique modifier, reset X-forms, re-did my weighting, saved the .phy file, closed it and opened it again later. Fucked again and the .phy file didn't assign the verts properly. So I fixed the verts that the .phy didn't assign properly, saved the .phy again, had all the verts locked, closed it to go to bed, open it in the morning and dammit! Fucked again. I've re-done the assigning and weighting probably 4 times this week on this model.

Guess it's time to learn to use skin. Wish someone would make a skin vid tut like Poop's physique vid. Fatassassin I'm looking your way, hehe.

EDIT: I'm giving skin another shot and I gotta' say I'm liking it so far. One thing I didn't like about physique was when you're editing the weights of verts you have to do it one at a time or if you select more than one then they have to have the same weighting while you're editing it. I like how with skin's weight table you can select a whole mess of verts at once and adjust the individual weighting of each vertex. Plus, if I do happen to want all those verts to have the exact same weighting that's pretty easy to do, too. I think I'm becoming a skin convert, hehe.

FatAssasin

Yeah, skin is really the way to go. I've had the same problem with Physique in the past. Sometimes just closing and reopening the file with fix it, but I really don't know what causes it.

As far as video tutorials go, sorry, no time. But check these out:
http://www4.discreet.com/3dsmax/3dsmax.php?id=870
http://www4.discreet.com/3dsmax/3dsmax.php?id=399

Hollowmind

Yeah I've already checked out most of those videos and I picked up how to use skin fine from the max tutorials and user reference. Thanks though.

Badge

whats physiquing? this max program sounds strange, me frightened 0.o

Cubik

Skin can be pretty evil too, this is what it was determined to show instead of whatever number I put in it...:

FatAssasin

Hmm, never seen that before. Does it happen often?

Delaney King

Ok, the problem is easily fixed (though its totally f**ked and I recommend Skin wholeheartedly.
The problem is on some releases locked data outside of envelopes (even though the envelopes are not being used) is not stored (an optimisation I guess). To fix this, grab an envelope (any one will do) and scale it all the way over the entire model. Try it, it may fix it... then use skin instead.


Cubik... I also have never seen that one before. I did skin demos for a year or so and have been using all the builds on several machines... I would say you have a rare bug there. Anyone else seen this?

Hollowmind

I've already given up on Physique and switched to Skin. I finished assigning and weighting all the verts and now I can finally move on with this model. Phew. I do like Skin much better. I shall never use physique again if I can help it, hehe.

Delaney King

yeah... mirror just rocks.

dont forget to try out the skin tools in the tools rollout... it lets you output a copy of your mesh with the skin data baked in. you can then place this over another character, edit it into shape and copy the weighting directly onto them! its dead handy.

Hollowmind

I probably don't want to do that with this model. It's pretty far from the norm, hehe.

ScreaminBubba

The times physique has done that to me it was only a viewport artifact, scrubbing thru the timeline would "erase" the problem.

I'm a big advocate of skin also tho , but physique did have one useful feature, being able to scale a biped and mesh together was useful.

The new skin tools pretty much nuke physique now, unless there is a specific need to use it, if skin wasn't supported.