Help me make sense of this tutorial step? (Transferring bone weights)

[AdmiralAlbia]

So I'm a complete newbie trying to port a mesh from Dragon Age Inquisition to Dragon Age Origins, using Amycus's tutorial (found here). I am using 3DS Max 2013.

 

The tutorial calls for me to import a model from Origins alongside the Inquisition one, then transfer the bones/weighting/collision onto the new model. However, steps 5-17 as given in the tutorial don't work for me, and I can't find any tutorial online that uses the same or a similar method.

 

My questions are as follows. For clarity's sake, I will refer to the mesh I'm porting as Mesh A, and the Origins donor mesh as Mesh B.

1. When he says to 'delete the head', does he mean delete the bones for the head which are unattached, or delete the head part of Mesh A, or something else entirely?
2. 'Also, when you import the vanilla mesh [Mesh B], make sure that the...' Make sure that what?
3. Step 6, 'Now select the mesh'. Mesh A or Mesh B?
4. Steps 7 and 8: I never have edit normals on the modifier list. Is it okay to just add it?

Final question: Is there an easier way to do this? While looking for tutorials I found a bunch of different methods that all seem simpler (skin wrap...), but as I'm not really sure what I'm doing I don't know if I'm just missing something.

 

Thanks for any help, it'll be appreciated!

 

ETA: Tried skin wrap. It worked perfectly. I don't know what the heck Amycus was smoking...

Edited December 24, 2017 by AdmiralAlbia

[phil76]

I don't know about dragon age modding but from my own experience :

 

1 - delete the head : you delete the head mesh, because your armor only need the 'body' mesh, the head is distinct. Don't touch the skeleton bones

 

2 - didn't find where this sentence was, so I can't give you advice

 

3 - He is probably selecting mesh A : what he is doing is copying vertex weight from a skinned mesh (mesh B) to a non-skinned mesh (mesh A). This method allow you to gain a lot (you don't have to manually assign each vertex).

 

So to resume he does : Copy vertex weight from a skinned mesh, transfer these vertex weight to the vertex from the un-skinned mesh. That's why he wants a mesh B which is similar to mesh A otherwise the result would have too much errors.

 

4 - just ignore this edit normal. If you see problem in game, you can always correct later.