Skinning problems (with custom char from max) [SOLVED!!!]

[online|offworld]

Hey everyone,

Been working my arts off all today starting out learning UDK, figured out a bunch of stuff but when I import my character with a test animation into an animSet in her skeletalMesh the skinning goes nuts and I don't really know how to fix it (so time to ask online). I made a couple of screenshots showing her behaving in max but being naughty in UDK :

http://www.showmethatagain.com/posts/100126_220500_udkProblem01.jpg

I been googling for sometime, but can't find an answer. Can anyone suggest anything that might help? She's just using a biped and skin modifier, and there are a couple of normal bones out back for her ponytail.

p.s. here's her wip at polycount for anyone who's interested in that sort of thing : http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?p=1067259

[geodav]

looks like a skining problem to me, had it a few times my self. double check your vertices weights are on the correct bones

[Mrfred]

did you used the epic/ biped rig for ut3?

[online|offworld]

Ah... I see what is happening...

ActorX has ignored (or can't process) max's envelopes and weight all vertices option, and only skinned vertices where I manually set the weight. I've already done the fingers manually, because the envelopes just can't auto configure stuff that fine properly, but (for instance) manually weight painting the torso to be well blended between the multiple spine bones would be a pain, thats one of the places where envelopes *are* good.

Surely I don't have to manually set every vertex in the entire mesh? Is there a way to 'bake' the weightings max has determined from envelopes into the actual vertex weightings in the skin modifier?

[online|offworld]

Hi Geodav, I went back and checked all my weighting and then I tried baking the vertex weights in the skin modifier (in max) then reducing the envelopes to nothing and reimporting to UDK but it didn't solve anything. So close and yet so far! It's too bad too, because there was a job interview I wanted to put show her for but the deadline for applications is today :(

Can anyone suggest anything else?

[Kelt'ar]

Did you try making sure that the rootjoint was at X,y,z=0,0,0 like the epic rig is? I used to get this problem when I used th middle hip joint as the root...but the broblem is that it moves...SO I'd make sure the root joint as at the origin 0, then connected to the hip.

[online|offworld]

Hey Kelt'ar,

I made a bone at 0,0,0 and linked the bipeds COG to it (and made sure it was included in the skin modifier) but nothing changed after importing it into UDK. I'm pretty sure it's just mocking me now *raises one eyebrow*

As much as I don't want to have to rig the whole damn thing again, maybe the only way to make it work is get this epic rig you've mentioned and use that. Do you have a link for it? (Hmmm... I wonder if converting the biped to bones will work as a workaround...)

[obihb]

If you want to be 100% sure the vertex are properly "baked" then what you can do is to make a copy of the mesh so it's 100% overlap the current one but with nothing in the stack, then skin wrap it to your other mesh with small vertex radius so it's not influenced any different than the original, then collapse that skin wrap to a skin and delete the original mesh.

The other thing you can do which is something I'm not really sure about the rules in UDK is the amount of bones used for blending weights. The UDK may support a lot more but I'm kind of always on the safe side and use only 3 or 4 blends at most. In Max it will default to many blends and using envelopes will blend whatever amount it covers so could be any amount depending on how the envelopes are drawn. There is I think in Preferences the setting to limit the blends.

Also one small other thing I'm actually not sure if the exporter is influenced by this but you should always reset the xform on your mesh as well. It's a good habit to do it. And of course the scale on bones. I think possibly the exporter ignore this but it's better safe than sorry.

So, you could check this and set it down to 4 blends and then skin wrap it and see what happens. Unfortunately I'm really just guessing some things to check, not a direct answer for a fix I'm afraid. But, wouldn't hurt to check them.

[Denny]

UDK uses a maximum of 4 influences per joints, any more influences above that are normalized on import so it doesn't matter.

[online|offworld]

Yay!!! Fixed it!!!

Not sure how much of an idiot I should feel like though... for a long time I've had a little trick I use where I slap an edit poly modifier on the top of a characters modifier stack in max and use it to delete body polys hidden by clothing (to optimize the poly count).

Turns out actorx doesn't care too much for this, once I removed it the pipeline from max to UDK walks flawlessly. *does happy dance*

[geodav]

glad to hear you fixed it :)

[Kelt'ar]

Yay!!!!!!!