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View Full Version : Mixing envelope sets in 3dsmax

DeFi
09-06-2007, 01:40 PM
Hello,
I'm just about rigging and skinning a snake like character in 3dsmax8 and I can't find a solution for the following problem:

I have two meshes of the character(same topology and vertex numbers) both equipped with a skin modifier and a different individual set of vertex/bone weight assignments. Now I discovered, that the envelopes of mesh1 work perfect for the lower part of the character, while the envelopes of mesh2 work perfect only for the upper part of the character.

No problem, I thought and saved the envelopes of mesh2, to import only the ones for the upper part into the skin modifier of mesh1. Deleting the unwanted envelopes in the import dialog and name-matching them (thus effectively filling the gaps with <empty>) imported the desired envelopes from mesh2, but zeroed all other envelopes from mesh1. I played around with the import options for quite a while, but nothing seems to be able to get this right.

Then I came up with a workaround: I put an edit-mesh modifiers on both meshes, deleted the unwanted parts and skin-wrapped them to a third copy of the mesh. This works fine, as long as I don't convert the skin-wrap modifier to a skin modifier. After converting to a skin modifier, a lot of vertices receive random weights and spike out of the mesh on deformation. I tried quite a lot parameters for the skin-wrap modifier, but nothing keeps the vertex weights from going frenzy.

Now, I've ran out of solutions and would be very glad, if anyone could help me.

Greetings

DeFi
Mattrne
09-07-2007, 08:50 PM
What I would do first, is make sure that your two skinned pieces have a fully collapsed stack. Make sure that they are just an edit poly with a skin modifier on top of that.

Then make a copy of one (as you did) making sure it is fully collapsed to an edit poly (I always prefer edit poly over edit mesh as it seems a bit more forgiving with this type stuff), reset its xforms and collapse again.

Now delete the parts of these 'master' meshes which have the weighting you do not want, then add your skinwrap, make sure the weight all points option is turned on then play a bit of animation and make sure it is deforming as you want. Then put it back into the bind pose and convert to skin and delete the skin wrap.

I dont have anything to hand to test this out on but I think it should work.
DeFi
09-07-2007, 11:01 PM
@Mattrne: Thanks, I just found the solution to get the skin-wrap method working. It's a stack problem, but related to the deletion of the mesh parts.

The edit-poly modifiers for deleting the unwanted mesh parts had to be placed below the skin modifiers of the master-meshes. If they are above the skin modifier in the stack, skin-wrap works fine, because it bases the deformation of the target mesh on the faces or vertices of the source meshes. But if it's converted to a skin modifier, it averages between the vertex weights of the master meshes that are stored in their skin modifiers thus effectively ignoring the deletion of the mesh parts. If the edit-poly modifiers are moved below the skin modifiers, the unwanted vertices are non existent in the skin modifiers of the master meshes and everything works perfect.
Mattrne
09-07-2007, 11:22 PM
Yeah a basic rule of thumb is you should try to never have anything above the skin / skinwrap modifiers in the stack. If you do then you are opening a whole world of trouble ;)
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