Skinning Issues

[jhamish]

Hi guys

Because UDK wants the models in several different parts (arms, torso, head etc...) I've found that when I come to skin them, where the edges of the upper arm and shoulder connect for example, gaps in the mesh start to appear when the character deforms

Does anyone know how I can get around this?

[DannRees]

If you're skinning your character you posted in the other thread (The devil dude) I'd say not to break it into pieces as its flesh its not really modular. I made a character as on part and it works great :)

http://www.youtube.com/user/DannRees?feature=mhw5#p/a/u/1/wGppyclVHhI

[jhamish]

does it not need to be in parts so that he can have his limbs blown off?

[DannRees]

I had no need to gib my character is its only for a cutscene (not intended as a playable character). So I'm not entirely sure what the best way about this is. The only thing I can say is that where the holes are appearing make sure those vertices have the exact same weights for each bone on each skin modifer.

So for instance where you might have the arms seperate to the body. You would have an open edge on the top of the arm and on the shoulder area of the torso. The vertices on these open edges need to have the same weights to the same bones as eachother. Even if you cap these open edges (like a neck stump and spine for instance) the rule still applies. for them to Join together seemlessly there must be vertices on each body part exactly ontop of eachother.

Are you using different skin modifers for each part of the body? If so try selecting all the parts and then put skin modifier on them, this should make skinning much easier as they all share the same instance of the skin modifer.

[Denny]

The UT3 characters, the example content in UDK, are split because you can customize them with different parts when playing the game. For example choosing if you want to have a shoulderpad or not. This is not a rule with the engine, just an example. Like DannRees did it's both easier and more efficient to do it in one part rather than splitting up if you're not planning to have a customizable character.

[Hitpawz]

If you're getting gaps in the mesh, then all of the vertices sharing the seam aren't properly weighted. What you see in your authoring app should be reflected in UDK so if you see seams in UDK, you'll see them in your animating package.

One of the things I like to do, in Max not sure about Maya, is select all the bones and save a reference pose. I then pose the model in its most extreme positions and fix the weighting in that position. Once done I revert it back to the bind pose.

[DannRees]

If you're not familiar with bind poses I find keyframes are handy with different poses of extreme angles :)