morph targets and skinning
My character model is skinned and the head animates with morph targets in 3ds Max.
My stack is as follows - from bottom to top:
For some reason - this could be the change in the mesh or just 3ds max randomness - is the morpher now disabled and I can't take copies from the base head anymore. When returning to editable poly mode, the whole model just dissappears. Finally, the "edit poly" modifier has stopped working as the head no longer is attached. This gives an ugly line!
What could have gone wrong? And, is it possible to make changes to the mesh once skinned? How can I get the morpher back to work? Can I still attach the body to the head so the ugly line dissappears?
Thank you; I appreciate your help!
My stack is as follows - from bottom to top:
- editable poly
- morpher (for face morph targets)
- edit poly (for attaching the head to the body)
- and skin (skinning of entire body)
For some reason - this could be the change in the mesh or just 3ds max randomness - is the morpher now disabled and I can't take copies from the base head anymore. When returning to editable poly mode, the whole model just dissappears. Finally, the "edit poly" modifier has stopped working as the head no longer is attached. This gives an ugly line!
What could have gone wrong? And, is it possible to make changes to the mesh once skinned? How can I get the morpher back to work? Can I still attach the body to the head so the ugly line dissappears?
Thank you; I appreciate your help!
Replies
Do you have an older version of your scene, or any autobackup files you could go back to?
If so, and assuming the teeth are not part of the morph target setup, I would just move them in the Edit Poly (the one which welds the body/head together), since that shouldn't change any topology at all.
I've now attached the head back in another "edit poly" modifier. However, the morpher is still broken. Yes... the teeth were part of the morpher base head. Do you think that's were the problem lies?
Shall I go ahead and make new morph heads? However, when deleting the old morpher modifier. The whole body dissappears. The ways of Max....
Your Dominance of War creature is amazing! Soooo original!
Possibly not though, depends how the morpher system works, I haven't used it enough to know. If it stores offsets then you'd probably be fine until you reloaded the morph target at which point the teeth would be offset again.
Sounds like you'll have to move them all in the morph targets
Going back down the stack and moving them was a mistake, like MoP pointed out they'll just slide into morph position. It would have been fine to apply edit poly on top of the stack and move them there. It would play on top of the morph and they wouldn't slide around.
1) Fix morph:
As long as you where just sliding them forward and not along any other axis, you could copy your base morph, slide them forward and apply that morph at 100% 100% of the time.
2) Revert:
- Save out your skin weights (remember to bake them first).
- Merge in an older version of the head before you moved the teeth around.
- Apply your morphs, load your skin weights and your back in business.
- Apply EditPoly to the top of the stack adjust your teeth.
3) Engineer your way out of it:
(I've done this in the past and it works great, but it does mean more rigging, but you're using morphs, so I doubt this is for real time?)
- Detach the teeth as a separate object.
- Create a helper/dummy.
- Then use an Attachment Constraint to pin the dummy/helper to the surface of the mesh, probably between the lips and the chin.
- Now create a bone kind of like a jaw bone.
- Use a LookAt Constraint on it and have it look at the dummy, skin your lower teeth to this bone and it should follow pretty much perfectly as the mouth morphs one and closed.
- The upper teeth can be skinned to the head bone.
- Personally I would add one more helper set to follow the jaw bone and skin the teeth to that (or just parent the lower teeth to the jaw bone). That way you can animate them separately in case you wanted to bare the teeth, or correct the position of the teeth.