can't rescale animated model - 3ds max 2013
polycounter lvl 5
How can I rescale models that have been rigged with regular bones and animated? Now when I have finished my animation I want to rescale the model to fit my scale system but, whatever I try to do it brakes the rig and animation of the model. I used skin modifier for rigging but I didn't use envelopes with it. And I also used ik chains but good amount of animation is regular bone rotation. I tried to use 'reset world units' but this also breakes the mesh.
Replies
This will copy your skinned mesh and saved the skinned data inside of the skin data mesh now.
Then you will need to right click and copy the skin modifier on the old mesh and then delete the skin modifier on the original mesh. This will allow you to scale the mesh. Scale it up. Use a percentage or whatever measuring routine that you can, that will allow you to translate the same scale information on the rig and skin data mesh.
So if you scale up your original mesh by 50%, then you know that you need to scale up your rig and skin data by 50% as well. So they are consistent with each other in scale in the end.
At that point. The orignal mesh, rig, and skin data mesh should all be the same size. Then you will need to paste the skin modifier back onto the original mesh (you don't have to to do this. You can add a new skin modifier and just readd all the bones if you want). Then go back into SkinUitlities>Import Skin Data From Mesh.
I used this method for biped and puppetshop rigs. So i don't know how it will handle custom rigs. You might have to save out the animations and reapply them. That may cause conflict though. Becuaes the animations are from a small rig, but are being applied to a rig that is bigger. You won't know until you try it though.
I have tried everything else that was suggested, even on one of the posts from this forum, that I found through google and everything gives the same result.
This leads me to conclusion that my ik chains are the problem. Is there a way to fix this or do I need to redo entire animation from the beginning?
Depends.
You could try and recreate the rig to the size that you want. And see if the animations transfer nicely from there. If that works, i would think that would have taken less time than reanimating. Or take you animation and set all the bones to FK, then save the anim. Then bring the anim into your new scaled rig. You may have to redo the parts where the IK is being used, but that would be less time than having to restart completely.
In the future though. I would work out a system to where you can rescale your rig easily just like biped and puppetshop allows for. Rescaling characters happens more than you would think. So i would imagine this would happen again for you in the future.