SkinOrDie

Manic

Hi there, i'm new here, not yet posted a model, i'll be doing that sometime soon though hopefully.

i was wondering if anyone had a copy of the skinordie maxscript, i've tried to get it from the makers website, but its down, or simply doesn't exist anymore.

thanks for any help

Manic

Manic

oops, found a mirror on the plugins thread! nevermind

bhood

Hi Manic,

I'm looking for the SkinOrDie maxscript too, but not found the mirror you mentioned so far... where did you find the download?

Thanks, b

Eric Chadwick

bhood, it's in the sticky thread... Max Plugins

It's such an awesome plugin. If you have ideas, Andre is really open to suggestions. If he's still around that is.

PolyMonkey

I actually just stumbled across this from a co-worker a week ago. I can't praise it enough and I can't imagine rigging without it now. Highly recommended.

Eric Chadwick

I just got an email back, so the author does still exist. He's saying by the end of the week or so all his latest code should be hosted via Scriptspot.

BTW, Andre let me know the SoftWeight tool is semi-busted. It erases all weights on the selected bone everytime it is invoked. But he's going to take a look at the code, so we'll see.

I wish there was a better way to hide chunks of mesh while skinning... anyone know? SkinorDie can hide the faces and freeze the verts, but the verts remain visible/selectable. In the past when I asked him about it, he said it was a limitation of the Skin exposure to MAXScript, and he was working around it by hiding via Editable Poly.

Anyone got any cool skin-mesh-hiding tricks?

arshlevon

i bust the mesh up into pieces.. rig them all individually.. that way you can hide whatever you want.. then when everything is rigged.. and incase of a symetrical model.. half.. i save out skin data meshes from all the pieces.. put the mesh chunks(not the skindata ones!!)all together and add the weights from each piece one at a time via skin tools..this process saves me loads of time..

Eric Chadwick

Cool idea. Which tool are you using to save/load... SkinOrDie? Takes a while if I tell it to load by vert position, since I guess the IDs would change.

arshlevon

use the skin tools built right into max.. it allows you to save out meshes with all the weighting info baked into them.. then you can re- apply them later if you want.. i will write a short tutorial.. its super easy..

arshlevon

okay short tutorial on a workflow that allows you to edit the skinnning on pieces of a mesh and then shows you how to put all the pieces together and keep your rigging.. spelling is horrible as usual..

*EDIT!!! the last step was wrong.. i told you to press the wrong button.. my fault for not actually going throught with the tutorial... it has been fixed.. new info is a differetn color of yellow

Eric Chadwick

Thanks man, this is great. Much appreciated.

Unfortunately, my skin meshes are often used also as morph targets. Vert order is a bitch in Max. I can use your method, but it adds another layer of worry, since each target needs to be attached/welded the same.

Thanks though, this is a cool trick. Will definitely use it for non-morphing skins.

arshlevon

dosent matter if you have morphing meshes.. you can use this approach..
make a copy of the model.. this will only be used for rigging.. break it up do the tutorial.. then when you are finished take the finished model and save out skindata for it.. then apply that to the morphable mesh... should work fine. skin data has nothing to do with vert order..it uses vert posistion..

Eric Chadwick

Ah yeah, OK. Just another level of indirection. Thanks!

arshlevon

yeah i love skin data, another cool thing you can do, is if you hae different porportion characters, but manage to keep a similar vert count.. you can take the skin data mesh, and since it is an editable poly you can move the verts around, or snap them to the different mesh and then import the skin data, and boom!! its rigged.. there are all kinds of cool stuff you can do with skin data.. i might sit down and write a more indepth tutorial on it now that i am thinking about it...

Eric Chadwick

I haven't played around with it, but I've heard there's also a way with the Projection modifier to project Skin and UV data between meshes with dissimilar vert counts. Got a UV tutorial around here somewhere.

sinistergfx

Yeah, I've seen that demonstrated by a Discreet rep, it looks -very- useful. I believe it's call Skin Wrap. At the least, it's good for getting a "1st pass" rig; but I imagine sometimes it would be just about good enough for final, depending on how different the two models are.

e_x

[ QUOTE ]
Yeah, I've seen that demonstrated by a Discreet rep, it looks -very- useful. I believe it's call Skin Wrap. At the least, it's good for getting a "1st pass" rig; but I imagine sometimes it would be just about good enough for final, depending on how different the two models are.

[/ QUOTE ]

I've been using Skin Wrap a lot at work and it seems to work well. I have had it crash max several times and don't really know why. It usually happens when I play with the spinners and try to adjust things.

Arsh: there is no need to use that work flow anymore. Using Skin Wrap is a lot better and easier then baking out a skin data mesh. I could never get the skin data mesh stuff to work right either...

arshlevon

i use skinwrap a lot .. just for different things.. skinwrap becomes real unstable the more parts you "ADD" to it.. and if the "ADD" button is selected and you try to do anything, its crashing time.. you really need to make sure you unselect the add button before you touch anything else.. i find skin wrap a gamble.. its either going to work or not.. or crash.. it was supper buggy in max 7 havent tested it 8 much yet.. hope its more stable.. i did use it a lot while i was at mythic, and lucas never believed me that it worked on verts only envelopes.. e_x go tell him hes dumb for me real quick..

e_x

[ QUOTE ]
e_x go tell him hes dumb for me real quick..

[/ QUOTE ]

Done, and done.

I like Skin Wrap, but yeah, it can be a little bitch sometimes.

I don't like how it assigns some verts to really small weights because of it's envelope threshold though. Looks like the new features in max 8's Skin Modifier will fix thankfully. I sometimes spend half my time going through a mesh and stipping out all the vertices that have under .15 weighting for each bone... Still faster then rerigging a character though.

PolyMonkey

Well now I'm finally starting to dig into max 8 and the new features they added to skin is straight out of skinordie. It's about time. Workflow is a lot more streamlined with the better selection tools and ability to quickly blend.