Skeletal Mesh View Animation Issues

[0x40]

Hello Everyone,

I have a few animations that had to be adjusted for the UDK, basically I had to link everything under a root; not a huge deal. Well, when I import my skeletal mesh and animations in the animation viewer Im getting mixed results.

I have two animations in my animationset. Sometimes one will work and the other won't and after a re import the one that didn't work now does and the one that did work doesn't work. No matter what, they both will not work one after the other. The problem looks like a skinning problem but I cannot tell. Also! This seems to be linked with the "Animation Rotation Only" check-box. Here are the images that I get with two different animations, both using the same bone structure.

Broken
http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/2876/67020715.jpg

Works
http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/3145/image2kh.jpg

Anyone have any idea whats going on here? I'm stumped. I did just find out though that the bone structures, although the same, are moved ~30 units from scene to scene, would this have any effect on how the skeletal mesh is holding these animations?

Thanks a ton!
0x40

[Denny]

Could you post an image of your skeletal hierarchy?

[0x40]

Sure thing!

http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/7682/schematicm.jpg

[Contrails]

Having a very similar problem - posted about it here: http://forums.epicgames.com/showpost.php?p=27070893&postcount=5

Can't say much beyond that though :(

[Kelt'ar]

I think your root joint needs to be at X,Y,Z=0,0,0

[Denny]

0x40 - I don't know how Max and ActorX handles objects, Maya literally hates having anything else than Bones and Constraints in its hierarchy when exporting for Unreal. For example, I see some things in your schematics that is called SphereGiz, Muzzle and dummy. Are those objects that ActorX understand?

[m3fs]

0x40 - I don't know how Max and ActorX handles objects, Maya literally hates having anything else than Bones and Constraints in its hierarchy when exporting for Unreal. For example, I see some things in your schematics that is called SphereGiz, Muzzle and dummy. Are those objects that ActorX understand?

I think Denny is on to it. Make sure you're not skinned to anything other than bone objects as they won't translate across and some vertices will get left behind in the animation. If that's not the problem make sure that your mesh pivot points are aligned with the bones pivot points.

[0x40]

Thanks for all the replies guys!

But I'm still having issues, I think it may be because the animated bones are not aligned to the bones of the skeletal mesh on some animations. These are animations not made by me, so my question is, is there any easy way to align these bones to the skeletal mesh?

In all the animations the root is now located at 0,0,0 so I need a way to basically "snap" one bone system onto another bone system after merging them into the same scene. Is this possible in 3ds Max 2009? I've basically come to the conclusion that its impossible to use the widget to try and overlay something exactly.

Thanks again!

[m3fs]

yeah now that I look at your bones, I am pretty certain that's whats happening. Your bone and mesh axis's are not aligned. So like x for the bone is y for the mesh. Not sure of another way to fix other than re-skin it. Judging by your model, it shouldn't take but a couple hours to do.