Max 8 Physique problem

Wrath

Hey, having a bit of trouble with physique in Max 8. I created a biped with a couple of twisting links in the arms and legs, spent a great deal of time assigning and weighting verts, and everything's peachy...except that now when I open the Max scene again, the upper arm and thigh links are all fuxored. I have to put the biped back in it's default position, delete and re-add physique, then load in the vertex settings to fix it.

I'd run into this problem in the past, but generally just doing that once would fix things...not having to redo that everytime I open the scene.

Anyone really familiar with Max 8 biped/physique that could help me trouble shoot this? I'd like to start animating, but want to get this quirk sorted out first.

Toomas

Why dont you use skin???

Wrath

Because I've used physique in the past, I'm familiar with its pipeline, and I wanted to see what changes they'd made to it for Max 8. Now I've run into a quirk, and I hate quirks that I don't know workarounds too.

Xenobond

I think this was fixed in 8, SP1. HAve you updated your max to that?

Toomas

Does autodesk still support physique? I tought it was dead like edit mesh.

Rick Stirling

Yup - are you on SP1 o SP2? Base Max 8.0 had so many CS issues.

But yet again I'll suggest you look at Skin instead. I made the switch during crunch on San Andreas, and was glad I did - and that was with Max 5.

monster

You can convert Physique to Skin using a plug-in on the sparks site. http://sparks.discreet.com/downloads/

The Max 7 version works in 8. Seriously, you'll be happy you made the switch.

I wrote my own script go back and forth between Skin and Physique if you can't get that to work.

Wrath

I re did things last night with skin and I have to say, I'm impressed. It took me a few hours to redo what took me a day and a half of tedious work to accomplish in physique.

Will still have to grab the service pack though, thanks for the head's up.

Rick Stirling

Wrath - with skin you can - GASP - add extra bones! And remove bones!

It really is a fairly sold system.

Also, when you are bulk rigging models, Skinwrap (a LITTLE flakey at times) saves hours. If' I'm REALLY sloppy, I can have a character rigged, exported and in game in 5-10 minutes.

By the way, does anyone find that the skin mirroring still leaves something to be desired?

What annoys me is that skin will say "I will copy THIS weight to here" then still mess it up from time to time (regulary, but we are using VERY small units.VERY SMALL Smaller than the inverse of my ego).

I've written a little skin weight copy and paste script that doesn't screw up. It is hard coded to always mirror L to R (or R to L, whatever) and only does one vert at a time (slow! select -copy - select - paste), but it gets it right every single time.

I use it with the max mirror - try to mirror, see which weights fail, turn on the mirror funtion to let max say "copy from here to here", than I manually C&P each weight.

So if I can can write a script that DOES do the copy, and Max knows this goes from here to here, why cant the max coders get a copy and paste to work?

Anyway, I do like skin. Much better than physique!

Scott Ruggels

If you have been forced to use Character Studio, then apparently Autodesk was aware of the problem and xed the twisting Joints problem in the following service packs detailed in this thread:
http://boards.polycount.net/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=117096&an=0&page=0#117096

Hopwever it is becoming clearer and clearer that most folks are building their own rigs in max, ala Maya. I have a tutorial on how to do that as a DOC file, if you want it? PM or Email me.

Scott

jec1183

I haven't had a single problem with the skin mirroring yet in max8. First I make sure I have one bone selected that is fairly certain to copy correctly like a finger bone. Then I go into mirror mode and look at what is in the red. Generally red should be objects that can't be mirrored such as a sash that is on one side of your character. If verts that should be mirrored are in the red just use the offset or expand the potential area of involvement. I have only had small amounts of verts not mirror but it is such a small fraction that it takes only a few seconds to fix and then I am done.

There are only a few bones that you have to worry about screwing up which are any bones that are not colored blue or green. If you have the settings right this shouldn't matter though.

Rick Stirling

I know how it works - but it doesn't

it is partially the scale that I am working at.

KRakarth

My god man use skin with your biped. I used to love physique - then i tried skin. Its SOO much better and easier. The tutorials you get in the help will get you going.

SkullboX

Rick: I had mirroring go bad on me as well due to a small unit setup used on a project I recently completed at liquid. The parts that were supposed to mirror did mirror properly, but envelop and vertex weight data of some (seemingly random) bones in the center would go crazy. Thanks for the alternative. I never had this with a 'normal' unit setup.

I also used to like physique, though I can't really remember if skin actually was a lot worse back in version 4, now I'm never looking back.

SouL

Problem #1 for you:
You're using Physique
Solution: Don't.

Rick Stirling

Most of the miroring issues seem to be with the mixed bones - where I have max bones in addition to the biped. But its still strange that I can manage to write a copy and paste that works...