Rigged/Skinned Model Scale Scripts?

PeterK

Hey guys,

Anyone know any scripts for scaling a model with a skin modifier already on it. The models often used bones and sometimes a mix of bones/character studio.

I've seen various workarounds online, but none of them provide solid results. I don't want to reskin every one of these models.


Any script or workflow that is reasonable for this task?

Chai

Hi Peter, these days you never have to resort to reskinning models.
I personally export weights and reimport them, but I use proprietary project scripts I wrote, and cannot release them.

Surely there are numerous export/import skin weight scripts ? (because scaling doesn't disrupt vertex order, so that would be a good bet)

omid3098

I know that CAT has RigResizer. but it's not script. it's a plugin and it's not free(except for 3ds max 2011).
but as Chai told, you should be able to export your rig, envelopes, or weights then delete skin modifier, scale bones and model and load information on a new skin modifier. I didn't test this myself, but you simply can check it.

Farfarer

Does the box trick work?

Make a box, attach your model and skeleton rig to it as children, scale the box the amount you want to scale your models, reset Xform on the box.

cw

also take a look at 'skintools' in max - it bakes weight properties into a copy of your mesh which you can scale to your new mesh size and transfer back to the new (reset xform-ed) game model.

Have fun!

Also, google for pen tools (paul neale), there is a reset xform which you can use on bones without resetting their orientation, it just resets the scale to 1. It sometimes has a miniscule error margin, like instead of 1 it will be 0.999999 but it works fine for me when I need to scale a skeleton.

Mark Dygert

Here's what I do and it works pretty well.

Bake and save out the skin weights.
Remove skin
Scale the skeleton, if its a custom bone rig then don't scale but use Animation > Bone Tools to reposition the joints. If its biped, enter figure mode and adjust the height.
Scale the mesh to match the new skeleton
Reset scale transform (hierarchy tab, no need to reset xform and screw everything up)
Apply skin and load in the weights.

Tips:
Place the working pivot at the lowest center point of the skeleton. If you're using biped its at the frozen footstep node. Then use the working pivot to scale up all of the mesh pieces at the same time.

I've done this quite a bit with biped and never had a problem even with fully animated characters it works really well. With custom rigs... well it all depends on what you have going on.

PeterK

Thanks guys, I've used some of the methods above. I appreciate everyone taking the time to help.

Since I'm exporting to .x, it seems like I need to create a new biped and then apply the skin weights that way. It's alright though, since I just exported a .fig for the layout.

for my bones rigs though, I think I'll have to redo those, they're not playing nice with scaling at all.