B Tutorial Animation Extension Tutorial - Rigging And Animation.

[Great_Duke]

hey, I'm using max 8 now instead of milkshape... even tough I am just learning to use the software and this is probably obvious here it goes:

when i import an smd file using hl2 importer there are no bones... they don't show up and i can't select them clicking the "add" button on the "modify" menu.

 

[Drimakus]

Greetings Knights!

Firstly - thanx for all your valuable tutorials (Yoshi especially). I'm already get in all the understandings of m&b modding without asking any questions here, but now, i've got a really trouble:

                                                                     
                                                                        DAMNED HORSES!!!

Well, after rigging it in max(, everything looks just fine but in game... You know, it's like a jelly - mesh parts bounding in misc directions. I'm just cant understand whats wrong, everything was fine with the armor meshes but horses are crazy  I think there somethin' with the bones, - i've tried different types of default horses skeletons and reskinned them many times. It's tooks me already a couple of days - im confused 

I'm using Cannonfoder's plugins and some scripts for import. But... again, them works good with all except horses.

Thx in advance


4Great_Duke:
Which exactly importer you are using ? I'm used scripts as well as plugs and everything works nicely.

PS: sorry for my bad english, i'm a russian afterall

 

[Scion]

Hi Drimakus,

there was a new horse skeleton with 0.800, I don`t know if that is the problem but

Re. Updating BRFEdit, I have been busy with other things this week, so for anyone who wants to do horses, you can use this new skeleton file for now:

http://members.iinet.net.au/~dstent/mnb/skel_horse.zip

Place it in your editorData directory, and then when you export a mesh bound to the horse skeleton it will export this propper one.  It is very similar to the old one, just with an extra neck bone.

I have not tested it at all yet myself, so let me know if there are any problems.

Looks like 0.800 horses has still to be directly supported in BRF Edit.

 

[Yoshiboy]

thanks scion, took the words out of my mouth.

sorry great duke, can't help you.

 

[Great_Duke]

4Great_Duke:
Which exactly importer you are using ? I'm used scripts as well as plugs and everything works nicely.

cannonfodder latest. will I have to go thrugh the trouble of dowloading gmax just to rigg a few clothes?i mean...damm!

 

[Drimakus]

Hehehehey! It works now =) Respect Scion for quick and full answer

Actually it crashes BRFedit(v 0.8.0) when exporting - meshes and skeletons becomes incompatible or smthng, but i'm importing that new skel_horse.smd directly to max and workin further on.

btw, somethin strange with the horse' tail bones orientation axes. Besides, 21th bone is flipped inside out and also blah blah blah. I guess everything will be fine


Great Duke, you just need one rigged cloth-model for reference, i can send you one but... if you fail exporting it back in with your scratched tools i dont care

 

[Highelfwarrior]

I'm not sure its in the tutorial, and I didn't check so forgive me if this is, but anyway, a random tip I thought I'd throw out there :

If you're rigging with verts (Envelopes work too though) and you're rigging something complicated that is bound to take you loads of time and a bunch of tweaking/redoing, then instead of putting ingame and checking there you can save time by simply selecting the actuall bones in the max scene and move then around using the move tool. (Best use move. Not rotate). After you've moved a bone you can simply Undo (Ctrl+Z). Like that you can check if an arm bone has the correct verts rigged to it and you didn't accidentally rigged a leg vert to the arm or something.

 

[Drimakus]

2Highelfwarrior:

Heh, if so, i can recommend you a twicely quick'n'handy method i'm always usin'

All you need is to bind those testing moves to the animation track bar. So you dont even need to exit Skin editing mode and use Ctrl+Z - just scroll the animation tracker, one way and another.

 

[notw]

OK, so I've rigged my model to the skeleton, and I know that all the vertices are rigged because I re-imported it after exporting it as an smd, and moved it around to double-check. But, when I load it in M&B, it looks like this:

....or....

What's wrong?

 

[The Pope]

The exporter screws up when the order of the bones is wrong. IIRC you need to clone the mesh then delete the original, which moves it to the bottom of the list.

 

[notw]

After cloning, deleting, and then having to re-rig the mesh once again because gmax is stupid, I still got the same result:

I'm at a loss...

 

[notw]

If anyone has any other ideas, I'd really appreciate the help.

Thanks.

 

[The Pope]

I can't think of anything else

 

[Hellequin]

My only suggestion is to try Blender.

Seriously, though, it might be worth a try.  Import your .obj into blender, import an armour .smd after exporting it from BRFEdit 0.8.2, delete the armour and keep the skeleton; all the same kinds of stuff.  But slightly different rigging tools; maybe they'll sit straighter with your intuition than the ones you're using now.  And quite possibly eventually you'll be able to do much more than you can now; they're very powerful tools overall.

If you want to try this, the scripts are up in the Repository (quite recent, they're still on the front page).  Blender's free and is the first google hit on "blender", it's easy to find.

 

[notw]

I just tried doing the entire process with milkshape and it worked. But, because milkshape can only assign one bone to each vertex, the model is kind of blocky and funny-lookin'. I might try blender to see if I can improve that. Anyway, thanks guys.

 

[DJNad]

I gave up trying to rig in GMax... it just doesn't work.

I have tried everything, and I still have the same problem as notw above....

I think the only solution is to use a different 3d editor

 

[Nethoras]

thanks for this turorial, you've basically enabled the masses to make mods, thx. also is it possible to assign parts to a bone that don't reallly line up with the bone? If this were so you coud make some kewl new stuff, I,m going to try and assign fat guys belly to some other baart of his body (possibly the knees) to make a jiggly fat mutant ! (sorry if someone  has already brought this up)

 

[Yoshiboy]

thanks for this turorial, you've basically enabled the masses to make mods, thx. also is it possible to assign parts to a bone that don't reallly line up with the bone? If this were so you coud make some kewl new stuff, I,m going to try and assign fat guys belly to some other baart of his body (possibly the knees) to make a jiggly fat mutant ! (sorry if someone  has already brought this up)

No problem, its certainly possible to some degree. Already quite a few monsters have been made for mods

 

[Highelfwarrior]

Yeah. Its all about trying bones and experimenting.

I've done alot of crazy stuff with the horse skeleton (Rhino's, Kaduu -- two legged creatures like the gungan mount in Star wars etc.)

And I've seen crazy stuff for the human skeleton as well. Just use your imagination and try and make it work.

 

[Chilly5]

Yea....problem here.
1. When I import my obj model, it gives me this error:

I ignore it however, because the model still got in. But sometimes the model randomly disapears when I work on it, then reapears later.

2. I scale the obj model to a smd model, I go to skin and edit envelopes, I click on add bone, All -> Select. The things are there, I may or may not edit the purple rings (im guessing those are verts?). But either way, when I pick my model and go to export, I get this message:
"unknown property: "filename" in undefined
I ignore it, and open the listner window. But when I click on grab, it crashes and gives me the "send error report" message.

Any help? Is there something wrong with my model?