Rigging For Games...

[Gwot]

Most 3d engines only use weights (quake series, unreal series, etc). This will change as tech improves but for now it's the most efficient use of resources in a game engine.

[Quizboy]

thanks gwot. so i basically rigid skin my character and then paint weights, and that's it - right?

[Gwot]

That sounds about right. What app are you using? In Max/CS I would have applied a rigid physique then tweaked the vertex weights by hand. In LW I just use Vertex Paint to paint all my weights by hand.

[Quizboy]

I'm in Maya. i think it's pretty much the same concept. Rigid bind to the skeleton, place the character in various extreme poses and paint weights by hand until the character looks good in all deformation positions...of course it'll never be perfect. how long does this usually take you to do per character?

[Gwot]

With vertex paint not long at all. I only have to paint one side, then just mirror the weights. I can get pretty decent weight results after a couple hours. First pass rough paint in only a few minutes, the rest is all tweaks.

Talk to somone in a maya forum just to be sure on this, but I've heard you can do smooth binds as well for game stuff. I don't know the specifics though, not being a maya user - I just recognize the terms. :D

If you ask on the 3d discussion forum on the Polycount msg boards I'm sure someone like Wargouhl would help with this. He works at EA and is a maya guru for game stuff.


Polycount Forums (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~polycount/ubb/Ultimate.cgi?action=intro&BypassCookie=true)

[goosh]

Smooth binding in Maya works great. (the amount of max influence per bone depends on the game engine... basically, the better the engine, the more bones you can assign per vertex)

As far as how long it would take..
I've skinned whole characters in about 4-5 hours

Goosh

[Quizboy]

Well Gosh, goosh. If I can get my weights painted in double the time i'll be cooking with gas. I've got 4 characters which I'll be animating so if I can be done this weekend i'll be a happy camper...i'll let you know.

[character]

in Maya you're gonna have to use smooth bind if you want to paint verts. rigid binding uses flexors to determine the vertex to bone attributes

[Quizboy]

i'm working on it now character, thanks. and it's certainly taking a lot longer than 4 hours for me...

[Quizboy]

quick question then. when planning to mirror my weighting...does that mean i have to avoid placing any influence from joints on the opposite side of the axis?

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