How do I quickly copy "Skin Weight Table" from one item to a

[Bonafide]

I have remodeled some items from the game to fit another character and i need to copy the "Skin Weight Table" to be able to export. How do I do this quickly in 3ds max

[Skree000]

when you are remodelling skinned meshes, you have to apply an 'Edit Poly' or 'Edit Mesh' modifier on TOP of the skin, below the BS-Dismemberment modifier.

 

Be careful, lots of changes to topology such as added polygons, open faces or deleted vertexes will screw up the skin modifier because it reorganizes the vertex table.

 

 

If you are only MOVING vertexes around, that is fine and can be done in one shot. Add your edit poly or edit mesh modifier Between BSDismemberment and Skin modifiers, then work your vertexes/polys.

 

When you are done, drag your Skin modifier UP and on TOP of your Edit Mesh/Poly modifier, then Right click your Edit Mesh/Poly modifier and pick COLLAPSE TO. DO NOT pick Collapse ALL (that will collapse the Skin and it will be gone).

 

Once you are done that you should have only your BsDismemberment MOdifier on top, then Skin modifier under it, and Edit Mesh/Poly at the bottom. (3 items listed)

 

Make small changes then drag skin up, collapse to. Add another edit mesh/poly, make small changes, drag skin up, collapse to, etc.

 

 

If you do it in small increments you will retain your skinned weighted vertex table 100%. Sometimes you might have to to a bit of tweaking incase some of the weights change.

 

To do this, grab some of the skeletons bones and enable 'Set Key' mode, then rotate the bones a bit and watch how the skinned mesh moves. once the bones are positioned differently, click the Key button which will set a new rotation key (you have to set one at the beginning also btw). Then turn off Set Key mode and continue skinning. Scrub thru the timeline and watch your skeleton move and how it shifts the vertexes around on the skinned mesh. Look for oddities and mistakes they should be obvious, like vertexes popping out when they shouldnt, say shoulders moving when a leg is lifted for example.

 

Fix those by clicking the skin modifier, clicking 'Edit Envelopes', check off 'Vertices' checkbox, then find the vertex that are problematic. Click the little 'wrench' icon picture button which opens your Vertex weighting tool. once you have clicked the problematic vertexes, you can look at the bones that vertex is weighted to and correct it. Should be obvious, ie. a Shoulder vertex having weight 50% to a Knee bone or something like that, then fix it.

 

once you are done fixing vertex weights (if you had to) remember to open the 'Vertex Weight Table' (button near the wrench icon) and in that window, go to 'Remove Zero'd Weights' in the top left options drop down, which will remove the 0.000 entries from the vertexes (this can cause problems later on)

 

 

Hopefully though you wont have to reskin or tweak your skin because you worked slowly or didnt make massive changes with your Edit Mesh or Edit Poly modifier.

 

Remember to double check the integrity of your BSDIsmemberment modifier and expand it [+], look in each partition to ensure that each one has polygons highlighted. Those are the vats targeting and dismemberment chunks. If one of those partitions has no polygons selected it will crash when you try to import the nif from nifskope into geck.

 

alot to remember, but for now thats all you get from me lol. Ill write up a full updated tutorial when i get time.

 

 

As far as modifying existing skinned meshes go, BE CAREFUL. you can EASILY break the skin modifier. Remember to undo if you detect anything going crazy.

 

When you are ready to export, select everything EXCEPT for the bones and other nodes. (Just the mesh pieces, UpperBody/Arms/PipboyOff/PipboyOn/Head/MeatcapsBody/MeatcapsLimbs etc. (dont have 'BipLClavicle' or any of the other bone nodes selected when you export)

then go to

File, Export SELECTED.

your export window should look like this:

http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i237/tazpn/Guides/Fallout/Dismemberment/1-10-20095-07-23PM.jpg

 

quote from the niftools wiki about exporting skinned models for fallout3:

 

1. Ensure that Enable Multiple Partitions is checked. If not then the BSDismemberSkin will note properly export.

2. Disable Add Accum Nodes since we are not using animation at this time and don't need the extra nodes.

3. Check Update Tangent Space

4. Check Flatten Hierarchy. This gets rid of warnings in the GECK.

5. Check Remove Extra Bones. This gets rid of warnings in the GECK.

6. Generate Strips and Generate Partition Strips are optional.

 

Go to this tutorial page for some more info about setting up Dismemberment, and possibly help knowing what you should have it looking like;

http://niftools.sourceforge.net/wiki/3ds_M...s/Dismemberment