New bones don't like being rigged

[Psiphoon]

Creating a replacement skeleton with new bones works perfectly, animating those bones is fine...

But when I rig any part of a mesh to the new bones I get a runtime error when starting warband with ironlauncher. In fact, I get a runtime error whenever warband loads a brf containing any mesh that has vertices skinned to the new bones. The new skinnings are obviously recorded in the smd because they play without a hitch in openbrf when the correct reference animation is selected. Has anyone ever encountered this before? What mistake could I have made?

 

[faradon]

Which program did you use?

 

[Psiphoon]

3ds max + openbrf

 

[Slawomir of Aaarrghh]

Did you save brf file with new stuff as Warband resource type? If yes, try saving it as normal M&B brf. For some reason Warband doesn't like files saved by OpenBrf in Warband format (well, at least I get crashes on resource load if I save my brfs as Warband brf).

I'm not sure if it will fix the problem for you, but it's worth a try.

 

[Barf]

so it looks fine in openbrf...hmm......come to think of it, it should look all messed up in openbrf since theres no way to define which skeleton openbrf is using for animation.

how many bones does your new skelly have?...same as the original?, is it a new skelly or a modified original?.

 

[Psiphoon]

Did you save brf file with new stuff as Warband resource type? If yes, try saving it as normal M&B brf. For some reason Warband doesn't like files saved by OpenBrf in Warband format (well, at least I get crashes on resource load if I save my brfs as Warband brf).

I'm not sure if it will fix the problem for you, but it's worth a try.

PRAISED BE TOUTATIS IT WORKED!

That could've had me stuck for days, thanks Slawomir.

Here is what I was attempting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rSlqShi8sw

My new skeleton allows the weapon to move independently of the right hand, so my musket reload animation can be displayed correctly and I don't have to make it all over again. It also potentially allows for a few other things, like tossing the weapon into the air or throwing it down onto the ground, switching hands. Maybe later I might even add finger bones or wings. The catch is gloves/hands and armour/body have to be one and the same mesh, because hand meshes aren't riggable, but I don't see that being a huge problem.

 

[Knil]

Did you save brf file with new stuff as Warband resource type? If yes, try saving it as normal M&B brf. For some reason Warband doesn't like files saved by OpenBrf in Warband format (well, at least I get crashes on resource load if I save my brfs as Warband brf).

I'm not sure if it will fix the problem for you, but it's worth a try.

PRAISED BE TOUTATIS IT WORKED!

That could've had me stuck for days, thanks Slawomir.

Here is what I was attempting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rSlqShi8sw

My new skeleton allows the weapon to move independently of the right hand, so my musket reload animation can be displayed correctly and I don't have to make it all over again. It also potentially allows for a few other things, like tossing the weapon into the air or throwing it down onto the ground, switching hands. Maybe later I might even add finger bones or wings. The catch is gloves/hands and armour/body have to be one and the same mesh, because hand meshes aren't riggable, but I don't see that being a huge problem.

Lol I don't know why I laughed so hard at that but the movement was pretty hilarious.

 

[Barf]

My new skeleton allows the weapon to move independently of the right hand, so my musket reload animation can be displayed correctly and I don't have to make it all over again.

how did you do that?, I thought for sure m&b wouldn't accept a floating bone, can I see a screenshot of the skelly in 3ds? .

 

[GetAssista]

how did you do that?, I thought for sure m&b wouldn't accept a floating bone, can I see a screenshot of the skelly in 3ds? .

Well you can insert 2 new bones between hand and weapon, and if you are a pro with animations and progs, you probably can rewrite all animations for this new bone set automatically from vanilla one. Then you can edit weapon bone anim as you wish, it will be in effect free from hand

 

[Psiphoon]

how did you do that?, I thought for sure m&b wouldn't accept a floating bone, can I see a screenshot of the skelly in 3ds? .

Well you can insert 2 new bones between hand and weapon, and if you are a pro with animations and progs, you probably can rewrite all animations for this new bone set automatically from vanilla one. Then you can edit weapon bone anim as you wish, it will be in effect free from hand

Actually I just cloned the right arm and skinned the mesh to the cloned arm. When you clone a bone in max you preserve it's animation, which makes this a HELL of a lot easier- all I have to do is export the animation, clone all the bones from the shoulder to the hand, then re-import it into another brf. I did try putting two bones between the arm and the hand, but the game wasn't fooled. You can't ever change the location of the weapon, not even by renaming bones; it seems to count down from the thorax or something to work out which bone is which. Maybe there is something in skeleton_bodies.xml that could change that.

 

[Psiphoon]

BLOODY HELL IF I HAD FOUND THIS EARLIER

I just noticed a flag in header_animations called "arf_stick_item_to_left_hand", which would have solved all my musket reloading problems in one fell swoop, no nessing about with skeletons necessary. I just tested it now, it works like a dream, and since it's also an arf I can put it in as a variant without disrupting my new better one. It even holds the weapon about halfway up, which makes me think that maybe it was put in specifically for muskets.

 

[Yoshiboy]

BLOODY HELL IF I HAD FOUND THIS EARLIER

I just noticed a flag in header_animations called "arf_stick_item_to_left_hand", which would have solved all my musket reloading problems in one fell swoop, no nessing about with skeletons necessary. I just tested it now, it works like a dream, and since it's also an arf I can put it in as a variant without disrupting my new better one. It even holds the weapon about halfway up, which makes me think that maybe it was put in specifically for muskets.

That's awesome, does it magically switch hands at the beginning of the animation? Does it look weird?

 

[Psiphoon]

It switches instantly at the beginning and straight back at the end, so it will "warp" if the left hand is in the wrong place. Also, I'm pretty certain it binds it straight to hand.l rather than item.l, and offsets it so the hand is holding it around the middle.

To be honest though, I probably won't be using it- seeing the old animation again made me realise just how much I'd improved it with the second version.