LE [Help] Issue with custom Dragon mesh

[johnskyrim]

Hi everybody. After the success of my Deathwing Inspired Alduin Reloaded mod, I am currently working on another dragon, however this one has a completely edited mesh.

 

I've managed to get it working in game but there is a problem: whacky polygons.

 

Now I know the issue is down to weighting but I can't seem to figure out how to make certain areas NOT stretch within Skyrim. For example, I have some spikes along the Dragons spine and when I get the Dragon within Skyrim, they become bent and all over the place.

 

I had originally taken the Skin Wrap (3ds Max) from the Durnehviir model and tried that. I had the same issue. The next thing I tried was using the skeleton.nif from the meshes/characters assets/dragon folder and using that skeleton: I still got polygon errors.

 

So overall, I'm at a loss here. How can I create a properly rigged mesh without polygons bending and stretching all over the place? I've looked high and low online but haven't found anything that seems to work (or I'm missing it)

 

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated and I'll be more than glad to mention you when the mod is released :)

 

(ps: It's Onyxia's Lair from WoW)

[JDGameArt]

Skin Wrap works pretty well but it's rarely perfect and normally needs some tweaks. Have you checked the trouble area weights in Max? Chances are you have more bones than you need, or the wrong ones pulling on the verts.

 

I haven't worked on the dragons in Skyrim so I don't know their setup, but I'd go back to your best working version, open it up on max, then go to Skin...

 

Once there click on Edit Envelopes, and make sure under Select, Vertices is checked.

 

At this point there are a number of ways to check the mesh. Down the list, you will see an icon that looks like a wrench; this is the Weight Tool. Whatever verts you have selected, the bones with weight values will show up here. You can also use this tool to change the weight values.

 

Another tool is the weight table right next to the wrench; works in a similar way.

 

You can also check the weighting visually by clicking on the bones in that big list above the wrench icon. Red or 1.0 is 100% control of the vert, no color or 0.0 is 0% control of the vert, and it ranges from Blue, Yellow, Orange, Red. An example of what I would not want to see is the pelvis bone controlling verts up around the shoulder. Another thing to look out for are verts with 0 weight value. All of the verts should have at least some assigned bone(s). Since you used Skin Wrap, it probably wont happen but you never know.

 

There are also various tools in the menu to help you weight the mesh, but many are self-explanatory, so no need to ramble on about them.

 

Hope this helped,

Good Luck

Edited March 31, 2015 by Angilla

[johnskyrim]

I've had a small go at the vertex painting and I couldn't seem to get any good results. Some of the red painted areas wouldn't change which I thought was weird.

 

I removed my skin and re-did the process, this time using a higher fallout and I got better results, though some areas are still distorted, it's better than it was before, so I guess it's more tweaking to be done?

[JDGameArt]

Don't feel too bad, the paint weights tool in max isn't all that great. The bulk if the editing can be done with the Weight Tool. It also has that Blend button that can help. Using Shrink, Grow, Ring, and Loop to make selections.

 

Another way to make large adjustments is changing the envelope around the bone. The inner / smaller one gives the bone 100% (red) control, the outer one is the falloff. Chances are you won't have to use this because of the Skin Wrap.

 

As a workflow option, you can keyframe the bones in some kind of extreme pose and use this to check for fly-away verts; as opposed to exporting to Skyrim each time.