Jump to content

Tutorial: 3ds Max Skinned Meshes Into Game


Vannus

Recommended Posts

Has anyone found a simpler way of modifying body meshes? I need to remove parts of the Astrid body to prevent clipping through the armor. A problem that wouldn't exist if the missing area under the underwear wasn't so big. Anyway, I have one body that shows up in game. It looks like a bomb went off inside her, but I'm sure I could fix that with other posts in this topic. I'm just not thrilled with idea that to get the other weight I have to take that mesh and move all those vertices.

 

there is no simpler way, have to get your hands dirty in a modelling program ie max or maya if you want to manipulate the vertexes in the meshes, which thereby necessitates following import/export guidelines as well as nifskope work

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 459
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Has anyone found a simpler way of modifying body meshes? I need to remove parts of the Astrid body to prevent clipping through the armor. A problem that wouldn't exist if the missing area under the underwear wasn't so big. Anyway, I have one body that shows up in game. It looks like a bomb went off inside her, but I'm sure I could fix that with other posts in this topic. I'm just not thrilled with idea that to get the other weight I have to take that mesh and move all those vertices.

 

there is no simpler way, have to get your hands dirty in a modelling program ie max or maya if you want to manipulate the vertexes in the meshes, which thereby necessitates following import/export guidelines as well as nifskope work

 

Don't mind getting dirty, had little problem with doing everything twice even, but hand moving hundreds or thousands of vertices is a little... well ridiculous actually. Hopefully someone will come up with a way be it a Max plugin or whatever to do it efficiently soon.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

there are workflow habits and knowing the softwares quirks and ins and outs helps. Its these expedious workflow tricks and tips that make things fast and easy.

 

Due to the custom nature of 'what everyone wants to do to meshes in max', there is no way a script could possibly handle all of the choices/decisions people would make when modifying meshes.

Would be the equivalent of writing a program that drew pictures, unless you feed it some pictures to draw in advance to pick from (cat, horse, tree), it would just make random scribbles. But then, you are just doing the work twice anyways right :)

 

For example, rather than move every vert, try selecting a bunch of polygons then enable 'soft selection' mode, which will grab all the polygons around it, (can adjust this soft selection falloff, its colorized, so its easy to see), and you can make large changes to broad areas in a hurry without having to touch a million little vertices.

 

Workflow habits and tricks will win the day here. The tools already exist, the tricks are knowing the particulars of them

Edited by Skree000
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Workflow habits and tricks ARE nice IF you know them, but I just got 3DS a few days ago before which I was banging my head against the wall of that is Blender. (learned in days on MAX what took months on Blender) All I want is plugin that could scale up xxx_0 to the size of xxx_1 (seeing as I have a reference to the size I need), but I see what you mean about 'what everyone to do to meshes in max'. I don't even mind making the changes in both files. There is another perhaps easier way to look at it in that if the game didn't rely so heavily on the vertices order OR if we didn't have to go through this crap to begin with just so there could be a 'weight scale' for characters. I know this may be an unpopular view because modders love a challenge, but this is near impossible for newbies to just pick up.

 

Perhaps, someone may find a process or set of steps to follow that would allow Max's reordering system to work "FOR" us rather than against us.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I tried using the Conform Compound Object and had a bit of success with that. I basically applied it to the _1 mesh to conform it to the smaller _0 mesh. It did work mostly, but some vertices went crazy. You might want to look into that and see if it can speed up your work flow at all. I think, if I remember rightly, that I still found it too tedious, but it may work better in certain situations. Certainly worth trying, anyway.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I tried using the Conform Compound Object and had a bit of success with that. I basically applied it to the _1 mesh to conform it to the smaller _0 mesh. It did work mostly, but some vertices went crazy. You might want to look into that and see if it can speed up your work flow at all. I think, if I remember rightly, that I still found it too tedious, but it may work better in certain situations. Certainly worth trying, anyway.

And there are other ways to automate this sort of process. If you had success with that way you tried, you can vert snap those stray verts and call it a day. :thumbsup:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I love you guys but sometimes you seem to scrim read the posts. I lucked my way into a half working mesh and cannot seem to repeat it. (Body wise, armors seem to work without any problems) That said Ghogiel I have no idea how to vert snap, read; " but I just got 3DS a few days ago before which I was banging my head against the wall that is Blender." can you extrapolate a bit or guide me to the proper tutorial? So far I got the basics down.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

shift rclick in the veiwport, grid and snap options, turn everything off except vert snap. Then press S to enable snap. move verts so snap to the one you want. If you can get it mostly done with something like a shrink wrap then snapping 100 verts shouldn't take more than 5mins.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

shift rclick in the veiwport, grid and snap options, turn everything off except vert snap. Then press S to enable snap. move verts so snap to the one you want. If you can get it mostly done with something like a shrink wrap then snapping 100 verts shouldn't take more than 5mins.

 

Not sure about the vert count but there are over 7000 points or 2500 triangles that need to be moved if the issue were a small number it would be no BIG deal but there are so many in a full body. There has to be a way to allow MAX to reorder the verts.It should reorder the same way in two files if I'm removing the same triangles from the same spots on both meshes. Just my way of thinking I guess.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I wouldn't do it by hand either, What I am saying it that even if a hundred verts fly off as a result of one of the automated ways of conforming one mesh object to another mesh surface then it's not really a big deal.

 

But if you find a way to reorder/match vertex indices between 2 meshes that the only thing they have in common is that the have the same number of verts, then let everyone know. I have no idea how that work, I guess something that mapped with a threshhold setting might get roughly in the same vicinity of vert order, but you'd still have to hand edit the vertex index, which imo would just be going about it wrong.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.

×
×
  • Create New...