merge skin 3dsmax

Ruz

ok, I have a 3dsmax file which has multiple meshes skinweighted to a standard biped.

I also have separate max file with additonal meshes which are skinweighted to an identical biped. What I need to do is merge the file without losing the skin weights/envelope asignment in either file. is there a way to do this?
If I try and merge the second file it will ask me to overwrite the current biped which means any existing meshes will lose their assignments

Ben Cloward

Save out the envelopes (skin weight .env files) of the meshes you want to merge. Then throw away the skin modifiers on those meshes, select them, and use save selected to save those meshes to a temp file. Then merge in the contents of the temp file. For each of the meshes that you merged, copy the skin modifier from one of the meshes that was already skinned in the file. Finally, load up the skin weights that you saved out in the first step.

Ruz

cheers for the reply ben, yeah I know that is an option as is copying and pasting skin modifiers, but I was just hoiping for a simple merge seems that's not really possible.
probably will just do it the way you mentioned though:)

Mark Dygert

The quick way would be to change the biped name (which renames all of the biped pieces) so when it imports there won't be a naming conflict?

The fast way to do that is to click on a biped piece, go to the motion panel, Biped Rollout, expand "modes and display", in the Name field change Bip001 to Bip002. Then merge.

poopipe

If you do as Mark says then you can use skin utilities to save the weights out to a mesh, Put a new skin on the original, and reimport the weights from the skin mesh

when reimporting weights from the skin mesh you can manually map bone names which I'm not sure is possible with saved envelopes/copying modifiers

Ruz

well I don't have a problem transferring skin weights, my point was that the rig/bones are identical in both files, so it would be nice if you could make the merged mesh with skin modifier use the bones in the file you are merging into, since the rig is identical.

right now if you merge an identical rig/mesh with skin modifier, you are prompted to delete the existing biped or rename it, so then I would have 2 identical bipeds with different names. need to merge the 2 rigs and keep the bone/skin assigments on both meshes somehow.

I don't think thats an option though, seems it would have to be scripted

Ruz

actually if you just select merge on import, it prompts you to reparent the incoming mesh which is awesome. Not sure if this is right, gonna do some more tests:)
EDIT
NOPE that jsut gives you 2 bipeds, imported biped with a root node parented to the original

poopipe

Im sure its scriptable but i think you'd still need both bipeds in the scene

Ruz

ok,thanks for looking anyway. Its actually fairly pain free using load and save .env
- you can even load information on to different levels of details by unchecking 'load by index'.
Still requires a little tweaking.
I normally use skinwrap a lot but it has limitatons as when you convert to skin it always defaults to 20 influences.