Tutorial: 3ds Max Skinned Meshes Into Game

[Wolfwaffe]

Good time of day,

I seem can't import any mesh into 3D max at all - it always says "premature end of stream", sometimes even without the import options window coming up. Tried that on two versions of 3D Max, and still doesn't work. Any ideas why this could happen?

[AfghanNinja]

hey, question; im attempting to create a shield from scratch, it is not like any other shield in skyrim (in regards to shape). my problem is that it 3DS Max will only let me save the file as a .max. is it possible to save as a nifskope compatible file and is so, how! :)

 

Thx

[Ghogiel]

download the niftools plugin linked in the first post.

[Ghogiel]

I was wondering though-- is it alright if snapshot is used twice instead of cloning?

 

snapshot is like cloning except it freezes the vertex positions at the same time as cloning and removes every modifier from the modifier stack. In this way you can create clones of thing that have all kinds of modifier deformations and get simple straight forward clones off of it.

[Laurelion]

Hi to everyone. I remesh the imperial armor, not a great job, I just added the pants of thieves armor. The mesh works well, the problem is the texture, too dark.

 

On 3d studio looks like.

http://img593.imageshack.us/img593/4882/screenfronte.jpg

http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/5390/screenretro.jpg

 

But in (the) game looks like.

http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/7306/nuovaarmaturasottoilsol.png

http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/5646/comeappareinrealt2.jpg

http://img849.imageshack.us/img849/8852/comeappareinrealt.jpg

 

This is how the original mesh appears in game

http://img834.imageshack.us/img834/2432/comedovrebbeapparire3.jpg

http://img713.imageshack.us/img713/984/comedovrebbeapparire2.jpg

http://img812.imageshack.us/img812/2004/comedovrebbeapparire.jpg

 

I used the original texture with a little copy and paste.

Does anyone have any ideas?

[Edmond Dantes]

Hi everyone,

 

A bit of a question regarding Nifskope, if I'm not mistaken, a looong time ago, I was able to combine every piece of a mesh that has the same texture into one mesh in Nifskope. I don't recall the name of the function, but I've tried looking in the current Nifskope and couldn't find anything resembling such function. Is it still available in current Nifskope or is this function no longer there?

 

Thanks

 

Edit: While I'm at it, it seems people were talking about the Skinwrap function in 3ds max. I use it too, but sometimes I notice that it would cause some strange behaviors on the mesh. For example, up close, the mesh would look fine, but as you move farther, parts of the mesh would suddenly become see through or something like that . Does this have to do with the skinwrap settings used? What is generally the best setting to use when trying to copy a skin data? For instance, what threshold and etc..?

Edited February 17, 2012 by Edmond Dantes

[Edmond Dantes]

I'm having a bit of a problem I'm hoping someone can help me with. I'm trying to modify the male head, but the head mesh doesn't seem to import or export properly into and out of 3ds max. Using the standard import setting like the one detailed from this thread to get it into 3ds max, I get this :

 

 

http://img607.imageshack.us/img607/6681/3dsmax2012022208105915.jpg

 

 

Notice the blockiness of the nose mesh. At first I was hoping this was just a 3ds max rendering issue, but when I exported it to Nikfsope, turns out the result was the same:

 

 

http://img813.imageshack.us/img813/492/nifskope201202220820320.jpg

 

 

Same blockiness on the nose. This is without any modification to the mesh whatsoever. I've tried various other import and export setting (with and without skin and skeleton, increasing or decreasing weld settings, etc) and the result ranged from similar to worst. None of which allowed me to make the headmesh usable in-game.

 

So my question basically is, is there anything different about the headmesh that would require some kind of special treatment / setting in import and export. If someone knows how to successfully import-export head mesh in 3ds max please let me know. I can't do my modification if I don't get past this phase.

 

Thanks

[Ghogiel]

there is nothing unusual with the head. Screwing up face smoothing is something that happens from time to tome on some assets. It happening on the head is rather ghey though.

 

In addition to that, all UV seams will be split, this part is something that happens to the mesh at export when converted to a nif and is not a 3ds max thing at all. You can combat the necessary UV seam splitting by welding verts on the import dialogue.

 

the face smoothing in this instance should all be smooth, so you can probably add a smooth modifier and set it to 2. in addition to that, at export time you should consolidate the normals at the neck edge loop with that of the body to make the mesh seamless etc.

 

Now if you do that, you have almost certainly fubared all the vertex order. So modifying the head in this work flow at all is probably not going to yield a usable mesh. You need to export from nifskope an obj. Or you will not only mess up the weight slider morph, and speaking of that you only have the _1 head to work on, but you would also fubar the morphs in the tri file as well.

 

It's Obj in and out and fingers crossed.

[Edmond Dantes]

Thanks Ghogiel, your advice about the smoothing group was spot on. I was able to resolve the blockiness issue and got my head working in-game. I just wanted to clarify this particular advice of yours

 

... at export time you should consolidate the normals at the neck edge loop with that of the body to make the mesh seamless etc.

 

What did you mean by consolidating normals?

What I did to minimize seams between the head and body was use an original head and positioned the bottom vertices of my head to match as closely as possible the lower neck edge of the original head (since the changes I'm doing only involves the upper parts anyway). I'm guessing this isn't what you meant. Could you give a brief example?

 

Thanks a lot, as always your advice is invaluable :thumbsup:

Edited February 23, 2012 by Edmond Dantes

[Ghogiel]

add an edit normal modifier and match the normal vectors of that bottom edge loop to the normals on the the body's neck edge loop, In theory they should match, but in practice they won't. If they do match then the seams at those joins that you always see, including vanilla, should be reduced, it's a compound issue, there are texture seams and what not as well. you can safely update tspace in nifskope and it will not affect the normals direction it will only redo tangents and binormals.

 

Speaking of these the normal map and vertex normals are codependent, meaning you shouldn't mess with the normals after you baked out the normal map.. I think even object space as that gets baked into the map itself, so if those maps were baked with those vanilla normals, then changing them like I suggest would only cause errors to show up in how the normal map renders on the meshes surface.

 

It all has to be done right together or it won't work perfectly and you'll forever have those neck seams people moan about all the time.

 

On and any blck random splots people talk about, I think mentioned it from using skin wrap, I dunno if it does that, but those random dark patches always sounds like weird normal vectors to me. once I am done with both the high and low poly models, in 3ds max there is a bug that can only be solved by converting to editble mesh, or adding edit normals and unifying. I always, always. reset xform, convert to edible mesh, then back to poly, edit normals and collapse before making the final pass checking all my face smoothing is sorted before making cages and baking.

 

I also learnt some cool s*** with tools>channel info. (was needing to totally remover vcol channel or export to CE2 would screw up) but I found out you can make geomerty changes AND paste the vertex number list back together and keep the numbering for morphs working. Google if you want to check wth I am on about. I didn't even know about that until recently.