Tutorial: 3ds Max Skinned Meshes Into Game

[PrometheusTS]

I got stuck to not knowing if I need or not to import the second skeleton and if I need to rerig / skin the whole second mesh imported to the actual skeleton or I am wrong?

[Ghogiel]

You don't want to import a second skeleton. if you have the skeleton already in scene, any nif you import that is skinned will retain it's weights. You can just look at it to see.

[PrometheusTS]

You don't want to import a second skeleton. if you have the skeleton already in scene, any nif you import that is skinned will retain it's weights. You can just look at it to see.

Ok thanks I 'll do that , I can delete parts so ? can I merge vertices together? Can I weld them ? can I add something else andskin to?

 

I do not understand much the part of vertex colro and vertex numbering stuff ...

[Vannus]

Ok thanks I 'll do that , I can delete parts so ? can I merge vertices together? Can I weld them ? can I add something else andskin to?

 

I do not understand much the part of vertex colro and vertex numbering stuff ...

If I haven't missed anything, then sure, you should be able to do anything to it! But as you've modified the vertices themselves—and therefore the vertex order—you'll need to use that same mesh and resize it for the other weight morph once you're done.

 

Sorry if I missed anything, though, and my help was pointless, lol; there have been a lot of posts I've been trying to follow ;)

[PrometheusTS]

Ok thanks I 'll do that , I can delete parts so ? can I merge vertices together? Can I weld them ? can I add something else andskin to?

 

I do not understand much the part of vertex colro and vertex numbering stuff ...

If I haven't missed anything, then sure, you should be able to do anything to it! But as you've modified the vertices themselves—and therefore the vertex order—you'll need to use that same mesh and resize it for the other weight morph once you're done.

 

Sorry if I missed anything, though, and my help was pointless, lol; there have been a lot of posts I've been trying to follow ;)

Ok thankyou so I can merge , delete, weld vertices freely as long as I do Clone the very same armour and move the vertices into a more "normal" position after the _1 bulky one?

 

but if I move vertices won't the rigging skin bring those back into position? I mean I have to redo all the thing since beginning to make match the morphed _0 to the _1? Do I need any special mofifier to make the morph work etc?

Als can I cut and paste the modifiers ontop of stack ? as I work better with editable poly than editable mesh so Coudl I transform the mesh into editpoly and then stack back the cutted modifiers and repaste over the edit poly?

 

thanks a lot for ur attention to my questions :) ...

[Ghogiel]

 

Ok thankyou so I can merge , delete, weld vertices freely as long as I do Clone the very same armour and move the vertices into a more "normal" position after the _1 bulky one?

Basically yes.

 

but if I move vertices won't the rigging skin bring those back into position? I mean I have to redo all the thing since beginning to make match the morphed _0 to the _1?

No. any pushing verts around under skin at the subobject level will be fine, having skin in the stack will not undo anything like that.

 

Do I need any special mofifier to make the morph work etc?

Nope. The only essential thing is that the 2 meshes must share the same vertex number order.

Als can I cut and paste the modifiers ontop of stack ? as I work better with editable poly than editable mesh so Coudl I transform the mesh into editpoly and then stack back the cutted modifiers and repaste over the edit poly?

 

Well yeah. I recommend edit poly when using skin anyway, as you can work under it and skin will actually update, even if you add cuts/extra geo. If you do so with edit mesh you may have problems...

You can cut and paste modifiers. but you may experience some errors if you have reordered the vertex number array between any meshes you are copying and pasting from, or the meshes are just totally different. Mileage may vary on specific modifiers, some have more leeway than others.

[Reddimus]

Hey guys, thanks for the info in this thread.

 

I'm having an issue with exporting. About 25% in it tells me there's an error and then closes. Any idea how to fix this?

I tried a non-complex edit, simply just deleting a portion of the model and it's still happening. BTW I'm just editing the mesh at the bottom of the stack, using the existing Edit Mesh. I'm also using 2012 64

 

 

As for what I'm trying to achieve, if this gets solved, I'd like to know what the best way would be to go about this:

I'm basically making a breast plate out of Ebony armor and want the body to show under it. I don't intend to edit the body at all (to make that part simple), just moving the armor to fit around it. Would I edit just the armor in 3DS, prep in Nifskope

and then copy paste the whole body onto that armor in Nifskope afterward?

 

 

One last question. Do I want to use skeleton.nif or rename female_skeleton.nif to just 'skeleton.nif' for females?

 

Thanks

Edited December 16, 2011 by Reddimus

[Ghogiel]

if it's not having something like a particle system in the scene or something that the exporter will error with, it's most likely the BSDismember modifier. Try deleting it and adding a new one, the reason is all faces must be assigned to one of the partitions or it'll crash. It will not update itself to mesh edits made under it, so it is wise to either just delete it and make set it up at the end, should take 20 secs once you know what the thing is. Or double check for it if you left it there for unassigned faces.

[Reddimus]

That was it. Thanks.

 

What exactly do I need to do with this modifier? Just make sure all unselected are selected, pick torso (for chest armor) and hit the +?

 

 

Edit: If my mesh has two BSLightingShaderPropertys I need to replace both?

 

Equipping in game is crashing. I've replaced all BSL-S-Ps, I've replaced BSDismember. Saved as both unsanitized/autosanitized in nifskope. Not sure what else to try.

Edited December 16, 2011 by Reddimus

[Ghogiel]

there is a tutorial on niftools on how it works.

 

The difference from F3 to Skyrim's use is that instead of setting up the different dismemberable body parts(which is 10x more complicated than skyrim's use/set up), It's only used for disabling sections of the mesh from rendering when wearing other armor pieces, basically it's a way to minimise clipping. For example the shins will be on one partition so that when boots are worn, that part of the mesh that would other wise be covered by them is disabled from rendering. refer to vanilla assets for it's use and how to correctly set it up on your asset.