Riggin in max 9

seforin

Ok so im trying to rig up a basic character nothing to fancy just 1 extra bone for eyes and 1 extra bone for fingers , generic biped guy

but its been so long (years) since I last rigged much of anything I feel like im pulling teeth doing this.

Are there any sort of plugins that speed up workflow of rigging nowdays?(Since for some reason symmetry rigging is broken?) Or any suggested viewing to refresh up to increase workflow.


Thanks ahead of time!

MoP

what do you mean "symmetry rigging is broken"?
they changed something in biped which means that in Figure mode, you have to click the little black * icon button to create a new "Collection" before you can copy/paste opposite poses (which I think is what you mean by "symmetry rigging" ?)... once you do that, then all the icons for copy/paste pose will become active.

Once your biped is set up, use Skin modifier instead of Physique, it's better. I don't think you really need any specific plugins or scripts in order to do decent rigs. I heard some people like SkinOrDie for skin weighting, but it's perfectly accessible to use standard Max features to rig a character.

seforin

well I mean everytime im in skinning mode, when im copying weights from left to right (symetry mode) they never transfer correctly, it seems like a rather off feature because sometimes it copies a few weights and other times it dosent?

Rob Galanakis

It can be spotty. Sometimes I just need to restart Max. Make sure the mirror plane is at 0, and adjust the threshold. Also note that mirroring weights works off the position of the vertices, and the bounding box of the bones- which means if you have multiple bones with the same shape, this can mean a problem when mirroring. There are lots of problems and it really needs a replacement or update, but it works most of the time. You can also use Skin Utilities to export the weights, flip the mesh, then Import the weights with the mirrored bones (a last resort, since it takes a couple minutes to do). If I have some quality time in the next couple months I'll write a much improved skin symmetry tool because I feel your frustration on the built-in max one.... I need it at work as well.

Eric Chadwick

Andre Hotz has an improved mirror-weight script, among many other useful Skin tools. Some pretty awesome stuff in there, though Rob might start freaking out if he looks in the innards. (don't do it man!)

Eric Chadwick

Also, I hate having envelopes in the way after I bake the vert weights, so I use Grant Adams' Skin Tools: Envelopes 2.0 to instantly shrink all the envelopes to 0 radii. Simple thing, but helps a ton.

cw

when i have weights misbehave in mirror mode the very first thing I do is go do the usual sanity checks - reset xform etc.

Once i'm sure the model is nice and tidy the misbehaving mirror goes away and things usually go smoothly. give it a try on your model and see what I mean.

good luck!

Mark Dygert

I feel your pain also. Skin needs a rewrite, preferably by someone who has used it day in and day out for a few months. It works best if you do skin by the book and never screw up... ever. Even then you can't expect it to work like it should. The more you use it the less likely you are to do something it doesn't like. However it does things it doesn't like all the time, all on its own...

In defense of physique: (Feel free to skip if you could care less)
Physique has its issues and isn't always supported by exporters but it has some crazy fast tools.

The envelopes in physique are deformable, unlike skins hard capsules, with physique you can grab one point and push/pull it around adding more points/cross sections as needed. This makes weighting areas like armpits, shoulders, and legs a breeze. It also has tools to adjust the parent child overlap and the base shape of its envelopes leads to some really quick skinning, which all but gets rid of the weighting each vert by hand.

The main weak point in physique is weak on is when you need to adjust weights on a per vert basis, its interface just sucks. the second weak point is with mirroring, you have to copy paste bone envelopes, yuck. For people who skin per vert, I can see why they would trash physique. But really if you're using the other 98% of the tool, that 2% is much less of an issue. There are other tools I won't get into because most aren't supported by real time games, but they are nice and not available in skin.

I haven't played around with the idea much, but there might be a way to start of with physique and get all the quick and speedy benefits of its awesome envelop system. Then transfer it to skin for final per vert weighting. Something tells me its possible, but given the bugginess of both, its not worth it.

A hybrid of both that is stable would be a dream come true.

Tips to not dork out skin.
- Add bones, but never remove:
Delete the skin modifier and start over adding bones. Removing bones has always caused problems for me, adding bones after removing some, is a sure way to screw up skin for me, ever since 3ds4.

- Reset Xform before skinning:
Already covered in plenty of detail, but as Rob pointed out the mirror tool works on the center of the bounding box (or the pivot?) Reset xform reorients the bounding box and the pivot. I like to place it at the models lowest center point, helps to have the pivot at the world center point also. Wrote a very simple script to handle doing just that, here. It move the pivot, then moves the model to world zero.

- Work with envelopes:
Envelopes can be saved and transferred to other rigs (a little faster then transferring vert weights). If you have a good base envelope set up it can cut down on a lot of the rigging time. It can get you a better clean starting place, possibly in seconds, which is great for getting a model in game really quick.

Use Skinwrap to transfer skin weights to another model:
This is one area Maya excels at, but 3ds has a pretty good work around.
If your models are approx the same size and verts are in roughly the same place you can skin wrap the new model to the old, and inside of skinwrap it has a transfer to skin weights option. Also great for getting a new model in game in a few clicks.

Skin likes to be on top:
It seems most stable if you don't add modifiers on top of skin. If you're working with morphs add morpher before adding skin. It also doesn't like things being moved up or down in the modifier stack once its applied. If you go back down in the stack say to edit poly and make changes, don't expect skin to still work. It might but you're gambling with hrs of work...

Psyk0

You should try bioskin, i just reinstalled it and it works with max 9 64-bit. It's pretty straight forward to use (mirror / save / load verts and envelopes).

I couldnt find it online anymore but here it is:
http://www3.sympatico.ca/psykopat/tools/bioskin1.53.rar

seforin

cool exactly what im using I'll check that out later tonight!

VAV

maybe I'm a bit late to help you but I just wanted to know why do you use a bone for the eyes

to my opinion it's more simple to link the eyes to the head and put a dummy in front of the eyes
then you go in animation menu and look for ''look at'' constraint and you link the eyes to the dummy

then you can moove the dummy and the eyes will follow it

finally, link the ''look-at'' dummy to the main dummy of your char

(sorry for my english I do what I can)