Problem with Base Male Tutorial Character for UDK. Thumb bones

[oscar3d]

Hi there:

I'm new to UDK, but I'm an experienced enough character modeler and rigger.
I'm using the base male file called UT3_Male.max (http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/UT3CustomCharacters.html as a rig template to create a character and import it into UDK.

As I know the last step when you are ready to use ActorX is to delete de Bip rig and leave the b_ bones.

Here is where the problem comes:

As soon as I delete the Biped hierarchy, I noticed the thumb bones (in yellow), they get screwed up, and turn 90 degrees. And when importing the character into UDK the thumbs look always bad.

At first I thought it was a rigging problem of MY FILE. But then later I downloaded again and tested the official main tutorial character you guys have at UDN. http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/rsrc/...s/UT3_Male.max

Lets say you want to just open the file in Max, just delete the Biped and voila: Notice how the thumbs on the character's hands twist and look ugly.

I'm using 3ds Max 2011 and tested it with SP 1 and 2. Same issue. This also happens with the UT3_Female.max file.

I've spoken with other people who didn't notice this at first, and they confirmed me this is also happening to them.

I've observed a tutorial on Youtube of a guy doing the exercise for a character, here;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-awe14FQBY
and the same issue happens (4:20 min)

If there is a way i can get assistance or guidance on this issue (or a confirmation it will help me a lot). I'm trying to find a workaround, but it seems that this master rig file for learning UDK custom character creation is not working as it should.

Thanks a bunch in advance!

[Mayan]

Ive also experienced this. very annoying as it seems the thumb bones are linked to the position of the biped thumb bones and when they are deleted, the thumb bones that are left individually rotate 90 degrees and stuff up the vertices that are weighted. This happens to the UT3_Male.max character too, not just my custom model... delete the biped skeleton as soon as the UT3_Male file is open and you can see how his thumbs are affected.

Doesn't seem to be much info about this on the net, all that comes up in google is this post. Does no one else have this problem or is it just that no one else has noticed or is it a known problem and overlooked? The Youtube tutorials that ive seen that show how to rig a UDK character with the UT_Male.max rig (like the one linked above) seem to have the same thing happen with the thumb, but it's not even mentioned.

Any ideas?

[geodav]

sometimes i really want to bang peoples heads for this, you don't need to delete anything from the UT3 riggs, i have imported at leats 10 Characters all uses the rig with no problems at all, now goto my website or my youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/ut40kgeodav watch the character videos UDK/UT3

on my website you'll see a pic of the actorx settings "USE THEM"

[Mayan]

I posted a reply to geodav's post in this thread over 12 hours ago... it said it wouldn't show up until a moderator had approved it and it still hasn't come up. Do posts normally take this long to approve? Or only the longer posts?

Edit: hmm I see that this post has come up straight away... is it possible my long reply was not approved for some reason?

Anyway, what i was basically saying was that all the official and unoffical tutorials have the instruction to delete the biped skeleton before exporting with ActorX.

Ive looked at Geodav's tutorials and followed along with the same ActorX settings but then the biped skeleton shows up in the UDK with the model. Maybe this is a problem with a single mesh model?

One way I seem to manage to work around the distorted thumbs problem is to delete the biped skeleton at the start then shape my mesh (move/scale) around the bones until everything is in the right spot. The thumb bones are still rotated strangely but I just shape my thumbs mesh as though the bones are pointing in the proper direction. This seems to work reasonably well for now.