Rigging problems

Cubik

I'm trying to collapse a rig to keyframes with Motion tab -> Trajectories -> Collapse. All goes fine. My problem is that I have to remove all helpers, splines and IK Goals due to export reasons. But when I go this, my whole animation gets messed up? Should this really happen? The bones have their own frames and animation now but they still seam to be affected by the links to the helpers, splines and IK Goals. I've tried unlinking everything from the bones (execpt the bones themselves) and that works, but as soon as I remove the damn extra stuff my rig goes to hell. How should I do a proper collapse so I can remove everything except the bones?
Custom engine.
I don't have much time left, till Sunday, and I have a guntexture, five animations and some tweaking on the character texture to do, so please if you have a solution, please don't let it be "Redo your rig" .

Now I can't even unlink the extras without blowing all my shit to hell! GAH!

Oh, and does anyone know I can the Motion tab trajectories to disappear. I select everything and go into Trajectories and then I have to wait a couple of minutes for the prog to display all the trajectories...

MoP

Can't you do an Export Selected?

Cubik

I didn't write the exporter, but I'll ask one of the programmers. One of teaches said, "just rig it with helpers and stuff, collapse and then remove the extras! You'll be fine!" And then he laughed and disappeard in a cloud of hellish smoke...

Eric Chadwick

Trajectories you can also turn on/off with Object Properties, if that helps.

What version of Max is this? This script works in v5.1, might help you.
http://www.scriptspot.com/download.asp?ID=802

Another route is to export to FBX, then import. Will (should!) collapse it to keyframes and FK bones. At least I was able to do this to a Biped...

Cubik

The FBX export gave some intresting results...

I'm using MAX7 and everything seems to loading ok but do you have any idea where I can find Bake in Max when (and if) it's working? There's no indication whatsoever in the readme files.

The trajectories checkbox in the Object Properties seems to be the same as the one in the Display tab. The fun thing is that they are unchecked as default so the only thing checking them does is to make sure that the trajectories are always displayed.

Eric Chadwick

LOL, that looks awesome!

Hmm. IIRC the bake script you have to put in the Macroscripts folder, and it also needs some "functions" plugins to work, so those need to be in your Plugins folder. Then restart max, and use Customize UI to add the Bake script to your UI as a button or quad slot or hotkey. Might not work in v7 though because of the plugins, unless you find v6/7-recompiled versions.

Looks to me like you might have to just re-rig the sucker.

About the trajectories, I thought you just wanted to turn them all off?

Cubik

Yes, but when I click Trajectories in the Motion it display magic, twinkly trajectories that isn't affected by whatever display settings the objects have...

I got the bake script working, and tried it on two boxes, link one to the other, and animated the parent. Then I use Bake on it. All's fine, and then I tried to remove the parent... OH GOD WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS!

Eric Chadwick

Oops, sorry that Bake script is for baking mesh animation, not for baking bones. Sorry for sending you down the wrong path there.

Try Sergio Mucino's script instead....
http://www.maxtd.com/Scripting.html

...hope it works for ya.

Cubik

Nope, still messed up. That script creates a clone of everything, and that's pretty useless for me. And I still can't remove the extra objects. I'm giving up for now and moving on to the weapontexture instead. Thanks for the help.