Weight trouble with adding modding armor

[5seasons]

I haven't finished any armors yet due to item weight issues. Seems like certain items will always connect to "bones" in the skeleton. Is this due to (skinn wrapping) to the body? Can I skin wrap to the armor or clothing it's self. I'm having issues making vertices weights zero/0. Seems like when I do turn some vertices to 0/zero absolute effect other vertices in other areas gain wieght.

 

I'm trying to make an armor with a back pack on it and when I test it out in game, it flops around like a fish out of water. Maybe I should not skin wrap to the body? Attach the backpack to the clothing or armor?

 

Using 3ds max 2012

[pheo3309]

What skeleton are you using? Default or a custom one?

[5seasons]

I'm using a default skeleton. The body is cbbe 0/zero weight.

[chicky540]

the bone weights are essential what tells skyrim how to display armors while moving. EVERY single triangle has to have at least one value to a single bone that is NOT zero (in my case i used like 0.0001). if you put all to zero it completely messes things up / doesnt even work in game. the best thing if you wanna make things more static / unmovable would be either to weightpaint the parts manually (which takes forever and is most difficult but gives very good results) or, in case you made up your own mesh, you could join the pieces to one mesh that you wanna put together / simply mark all the triangles at once that you need and set the weights for all of them.

 

what program do you use? blender?

 

edit: and yeah, attaching it to the armor will most likely solve lots of your probs.

Edited November 30, 2013 by chicky540

[5seasons]

Thanks (chicky). I'm using 3da max 2012 version. So attaching other armor/item pieces to the (base) armor is the same like attaching it to the body? So the process would be smooth then skin wrap to the armor?

 

Thanks in advance

[chicky540]

wait a second. so, to start from scratch to not have any misunderstandings here... if you work on any movable object, bow or armor doesnt matter, but i will go for armor now in my explanation, the weighting / skinning of that piece gets completely f up. im a blender user myself and sadly cant explain how it exactly works in that program... but in blender, after you got the armor exported and worked on it and lets say you add a backpack (or tons of skulls and spikes in my usual case :wink: ) you can do nothing with the weightings and skinning that the original file had. so i simply erase all the bones and weights im imported... then, you make the thingys joined, to have only one mesh, this makes the rest of the things you need to do a lot easier. once you ... lets say, attached stuff to the back of your armor, you need to weight it. i dont know if 3dsmax offers that option, in blender you would import the regular body (male and female are 2 different versions, keep that in mind, so for covering both you basically have also to make 2 armors) to its regular weights, then go back to your armor-mesh, set it active (by clicking on it), switch back to your body (which you should put to another layer, but dont erase its weights for copying purposes) set that one active to and you should have a script there that copies the bone-weights from the body to the armor-mesh. then you would only set the now weighted armor active, and import from your base armor (the one you picked for working on it) the skeleton only and parent it directly to your armor. next would be testing it in game, and then eventually fine tune the weights... since i think that this text version here is kinda hard to get and also hard to write, im gonna look up my tutorial-bookmarks... maybe sth covers your problems.

 

 

this here covers the way for blender, but some steps need to be done no matter what program you use: http://www.loverslab.com/topic/11495-converting-armors-to-skyrim-the-blender-way/

 

i had some 3dsmax stuff bookmarked, but it seems that "tes.wiki" is having server issues, i cant access them now.. *wonders*

 

stupid question, but did you work on armor before? ... its best to start with static weapons because you dont have to weight them, and you can learn a lot from them... just saying.

Edited November 30, 2013 by chicky540

[5seasons]

Thanks chicky. I'm all about taking the right steps and leaning what each proposed option does. Seems like I have about half of it figured out.

 

Thanks for the link.

[Ragicka]

I'm no expert at rigging (nor do I play one on TV) :D , this is just my interpretation. Anytime you skin wrap a mesh, each of the vertices will be assigned to bones in their immediate vicinity. This is necessary for the armor/clothing to move with the body. Each vertice can be assigned to a minimum of at least one bone up to a maximum of 4 bones. Any more than 4 bones per vertice is asking for trouble. This can be set in Max in the Skin tools rollout under Advanced Parameters "Bone Affect Limit: 4" and the niftools export dialogue (Skin Modifier section, Bones Per Vertex: 4).

If a vertice is weighted to one bone, the strength of the pull is equal to 1.00 or 100%. That single bone completely controls the movement of that vertice.

If the vertice is weighted to 2 bones, the pull will be 0.5 plus 0.5 or 0.6 plus 0.4 or in any combination that adds up to 1.00
Think of that vertice in a tug of war between those two bones. It may be an even match or one bone may have a stronger pull when it moves.

When you have 3 or 4 bones weighted to that vertice it can be a 3 or 4 way tug of war. In either case, the pull of those bones on that vertice always adds up to 1.00. So when you use Abs.Effect to zero out the weighting for one bone, you change the balance of that tug of war and the weighting gets redistributed among the remaining bones. This can be useful for bones that have almost no effect on that vertice or bones you don't want affecting that vertice.

So far I've been describing only one hypothetical vertice. The reality is that armor and clothing meshes have hundreds if not thousands of vertices but the same thing applies. Each one of those vertices has a minimum of one or a maximum of 4 different bones pulling on it to some degree.

Normally you would skin wrap to the body (or to the armor and the body) but I recently found that it's possible to skin wrap to the armor as long as the armor is already skin wrapped to the body. I did this last week for a pair of pauldrons and it turned out better than I expected.

Take your backpack for example, the top and center vertices will be mostly weighted to the spine2 bone and partially weighted to nearby bones like L and R clavicle, spine1, and maybe spine0 and pelvis for the bottom vertices. Depends on the size of the mesh and the number of vertices and where they're located. When in doubt, I find it helps to study a similar mesh to see how it's vertices are weighted as a guide.

When you say attach the backpack to the clothing, do you mean using the Attach command to combine them? I wouldn't do that, you'll just end up having to re-skin the whole thing over again. It would be far easier to skin them separately and use nifskope to add the backpack nitrishape to the armor/clothing file. Or assign a different biped slot and make the backpack a separate equippable item.

[5seasons]

@Ragicka, your input is very informative. Youre shining light on some dark areas that I'm now beginning to understanding. I'll explore the (skin tools) that should help me out tons. Because some vertices are (warring/tuggawar) with as many as 7-8 bones. I'll set the assigned bones to a smaller number if possible. That should do the trick. Thanks.

[5seasons]

Thanks all of you. The problem was solved. I found out it was best to just assign certain meshes to just 1 bone instead of having multiple bones have affect on a certain mesh.

 

I actually imported other items from other mods and studied their properties also. Kind of followed their skinning structures. And also skin wrapping to the armor works well also.