Rigging question
polycounter lvl 9
Hey guys,
I've made some proportion changes(scale/moving verts) to a current model that has already been rigged. My question is do I have to re-rig this now? Because I notice once I jump back into the skin modifier the bones do not correspond with the mesh when I move them? Any help would be appreciated, thanks for you're time!
I've made some proportion changes(scale/moving verts) to a current model that has already been rigged. My question is do I have to re-rig this now? Because I notice once I jump back into the skin modifier the bones do not correspond with the mesh when I move them? Any help would be appreciated, thanks for you're time!
Replies
Did you non-uniform-scale the mesh outside of sub-object mode? A bit more involved if you did, but still solvable.
Go to Advanced Parameters rollout, save out your weights.
Delete the skin modifier, reposition the bones, apply a new skin modifier and add the proper bones, then Load the skin weights (just hit "Match by Name" on the skin dialogue).
I really should write a script to do this more quickly (including saving your skin modifier settings).
[Useless Max Trivia]
Each vertex is given a number, the weighting info is stored by this number whenever you go back down in the history stack and remove or add verts it renumbers the verts causing the skin modifier to apply the old weight table to the newly numbered verts. This is why it dorks out if you add/remove verts. Some times you can get around it by applying the edit poly modifier on top of the skin modifier and make your changes, but sometimes it won't. It depends on the kind of edits and how deep they are.
[/Useless Max Trivia]
I've written a script that does this, it saves hours when dealing with a lot of characters.
If it is just moving verts, try it and see if it works (it should). Otherwise there are ways, like Vig and Rick have suggested.
If you need to change significant geometry (but not the sizes), you can always duplicate the mesh, perform the changes, and Skin Wrap it to the original mesh, then Convert To Skin.
One thing I have to give to Max is that its skinning is very robust and flexible (even if I don't think enough of it -or max in general- is exposed to maxscript). You are usually able to change anything you want after-the-fact and not have to do significant work to fix it. I haven't used the new Mayas but 7 and before this was very difficult. Not an excuse to be sloppy (ideally the mesh and bone placement would be completely final before you start skinning) but game development is not a perfect process...
Kind of the same limits for both methods. Like Professor420 said for Skin Wrap, Skin Util is also limited to similar positions for pre- and post- meshes. Skin Wrap uses ray-casting, Skin Utilities uses radial distance, kinda cool. I've also used the position-matcher in Skin Or Die, but it's not so robust.
Thanks alot guys!