Character Rigged, Imported but isn't playing animations

[Code Jackers]

Hello there folks. well we have our own character made and rigged, we've imported him into the engine and we used the tutorial that has been posted on this site http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=717339
Yet our character isn't playing his animations the bones were not renamed and we used the UT3_Male.max skeleton to rig him Any tips or advice on this problem.

[JohNLA]

I am having the same trouble.
I skin to the default bone rig in max.
Export with the cull unused dummies checked and the model imports with the correct bones and works with the default animations but the character is very thin and deformed as if it was being pulled apart. I can recreate this in Max by deleting the Biped bones.
If I export with cull unused dummies unchecked the model looks fine with no distortion but it is using the biped bones and will not animate.

[geodav]

@Code Jackers, if you having problems with someones tutorial it might be an idea to PM the guy and ask for help or at least put a post in the tread, most of the errors are caused by typo's in the code, have you checked the the anims work with your character in the editor.

@JohNLA which bones did you use for the character skin b_ bones or the bip_ bones, if you used the b_ bones then redo the skinning as thats most likely the problem

[JohNLA]

Thanks Geodav, Your tuts are what kept me going through four re-skins and now I Have everything working great. :-)
I think my problem was stemming from the fact that I imported the Rig into my meshes file, because once I started doing the opposite everything started working.

[geodav]

@JohNLA great to hear you got it fixed, hope to see some pics soon

[JohNLA]

Here are the first SShots


A bigger version is here

Turn around on Youtube sowing hi-poly normal work:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnh1ybkqhKI

[geodav]

looking good, keep it going

[Dragon666]

I am having a nasty issue.
I made an advanced rig with multiple helpers, wired parameters, complex controllers like double chains for limbs (IK+FK).

I have several problems with it though.
1. Skeleton that is imported in UDK includes many of the helper and control objects.
Those were hidden during the export but they are still present after import into UDK.

2. Even when I export my animations and import them with the helpers present in the skeleton, no animation is playing.

I'm doing this for mobile and I can't afford to have more bones, so please help me out with this.

As info, I am using bones (not CAT or Biped, but the standard bone tools).
Some of the helpers and the control objects that I see in UDK are in 3DSMax parents to some of the bones.

There are probably many answers for this on the forum, but so far I could not find one that solves my problem,

[DT85]

1. Did you do a 'export selected'?
2. Make sure you have your animations baked upon export otherwise your bones won't move as they don't have any actual keys. Very easy to do this if you're using the FBX method, just check bake animation in the export options.

I've made a new rig and animations with Max Biped for a project and works quite nice in-game, so I'd suggest you go with Biped and dump using Max bones.

[Neongho]

If you are using a old version of max , use actor_x it's fast and easy to use

[DT85]

Only use Actor X if you absolutely have to. It's a much slower process.

- Actor X you need to have a rig (to animate the bones) with seperate bones (the actual in-game bones) constrainted to it. You must manually bake your animations to these bones, delete the rig then export.
- FBX you don't need to have a rig and bones. You animate and export the rig as-is. You then check a box in the plugin options to bake the animations to the IK obects (and anything else you need to) without having to delete anything.