Adjusting Biped of skinned character.

Mcbiskit

I'm working on skinning a character for one of my classes and am noticing a few issues as a result of how I positioned my biped within the mesh. I need to adjust the biped but obviously need the mesh to stay as it is. Normally I'd just start over with the skinning as I haven't gotten super far, but time is an issue and I don't want to lose the skin of the whole model if I can avoid it.

Currently I'm thinking I may be able to take all the verts that would be affected by the biped changing and skinning them to a bone that I won't be changing, then adjusting the parts of the biped that need it, then reskinning the proper areas to those bones. I'm thinking in theory this would both keep the mesh from messing up, and allow me to not lose the whole skin. Like I said however, time is an issue and I don't want to have to spend time troubleshooting something that won't work in the first place so I thought I'd get some you're guys opinions. Will my planned steps work or is there's a better solution?

Thanks in advance guys.

Piflik

There is an option called 'Always Deform' in the Advanced Parameters of the Skin Modifier...uncheck it and the mesh will not be affected by changes of the skeleton...

Mcbiskit

Ahhh I totally remember that now, thanks! I do characters so infrequently I feel like I have to relearn everything every time. Here is another issue that I've solved in the past and can't figure out now. I can't get the head of my biped to stay in the position I set in figure mode, whenever I leave figure mode it snaps backwards. Thought it had to do with animation keys, but I get the same result with a new biped with no animation. Thoughts?

Mark Dygert

You probably have some animation past 0 at -10 or something? If you go to Keyframing Tools and click the little white eraser it will clear all the animation on the biped. Then toggle it in and out of figure mode and it should stay the same.

Or it means you fudged up the skin pose or didn't set one. When you're in figure mode select all the biped bones, hold alt and right click and choose "Set Skin Pose". Take it out of figure mode and then alt-right click and "Assume skin pose".

When all else fails paste the figure mode pose on frame 0 with autokey turned on.

Its also possible to pass a corrupt figure mode from one biped to another if you save/load a .fig file.

Mcbiskit

Vig you are something else. I swear 90% of my postings end in you posting the answer.

Turns out it was that I hadn't set a skin pose. I don't recall a skin pose ever being mentioned in any of my classes. Wish I could give you those $1000s ha ha.

Thanks again!

Mark Dygert

Ha, cool glad it worked. I forget to set it every once in a while and its normally the clavicles that freak out.

While animating you can use the "assume skin pose" on individual or groups of bones. It comes in handy when you've twisted and contorted your hands/fingers into odd shapes and just need to get it back to something easier to work with like the default. You could use copy/paste pose also but it doesn't let you paste specific bones only what was copied previously. Anywho... glad its working!