attach weapons to armor with 3ds max

[nokiaslave]

Hi there. I recently downloaded some nice assassin armor and wanted to attach some weapon onto belt for pure aestehetic style. The belt isnt part of the armor, rather its one separated nif.

I got 3ds max 9. I've heard about some bone weight copy technique in bender and i wonder If i can do the same in max or something similar without wiping out whole skin modifier and weighting every vertex manually. Thnx

[Ghogiel]

Yeah, a few ways. though I dunno why you need to do that for something like this, weighing every vert manually sounds like you making a right meal of skinning. Anyway skin wrap modifier or skin utilities are what you want to look into for copy vertex weights. Bare in mind skin utilities, and the skin modifier itself actually, only work properly with editable poly and not with editable mesh- under the skin modifier add a edit poly. rclick that and collapse to.

 

Be aware face smoothing will probably be goofy after import and converting to edit poly. so you might want to sort those back out before final export when it's all is said and done.

[JDGameArt]

Yeah this is pretty easy to do.

 

1. Import armor mesh with skeleton.

 

2. Import extra mesh(s) you want to add.

 

3. Edit extras. Like if you have a knife in the scabbard, get rid of the blade. We don't want to render things that wont ever be seen.

 

4. Once extras are set go back to the armor mesh and copy, then delete the skinning data.

 

5. With the armor go to element > attach , then attach the new mesh(s) to the armor.

 

6. Paste the skinning data back on the mesh. You will now have the armor, and the new items with skinning data.

 

7. At this point you will need to use your own discretion as to how much weight and where you want things to sit with the new objects. Blades and handles should be rigid or .9+ leather objects should have some give etc...

 

 

 

 

Side Notes:

 

Worst case scenario, if you think you are missing skinning envelopes. Import the upper and or lower body mesh (naked), with skeleton. it will have everything from neck to toe.

 

When you export leave most settings default, but export NIF w/o anamation.