referencing.....help!

[b.Schulz]

If the skeletons are exactly the same and bound the exact same then your all good. All you'd have to do is go into the ref. editor and say replace ref. and then point it to your high rez model. If something isn't the same then proly you'll lose the animation information. I think there are other ways around getting your low rez model to be updated to a high rez model but I 'think' you'd have to set that up from the start and be using the same skeletons.

[fadegboye]

Thanks dude...will give it a try and I hopefully I will be back with some good news...

Thanks


Femi:)

[magilla]

Just to confuse the issue...

The animated objects of both chars must be named the same and in the same place in the hierarchy - the bind (geometry) is irrelevant. Thus you can have a no geom - or lo geom without blendshapes etc on your lo-rez model as long as your animatable controls are the same.

For example, if your lo-rez has no fingers you can still bring in a high rez with fingers without losing animation on objects higher up the hierarchy.

The catch with working with referenced objects is that it renames your char (for no apparent reason it prefixes the filename to the char) which causes major problems with character sets and other methods of animation transfer between files.

And, if you constrain anything on your char to something in the scene (ie, not in the reference itself) it won't let you switch the reference without first breaking the constraint.

This seems incredibly stupid - since you can get around it by saving the file as a MA (ascii) format - open it in a text editor and do a find replace of the present ref filename with the filename you want to replace it with - also remember to change the pathname, and the next time you open the scene it will have the updated file - no problems.

--magilla

[b.Schulz]

yea, names must be exactly the same...thanks for making that point. :)

[fadegboye]

Thanks for the helps guys...just one thing...I have my prim in segements and parented to the bones and on the other layer I have the Hi_res version. If I have them in 2 seperate files can I still use referencing as they are using the same skeleton...?

:D

[magilla]

not that I am aware of.

It's a smilar problem to the light - linking issue I have been having with reference files.

because maya seems to be name based in a lot of its operations it seems very odd that they chose to rename all of your nodes when it comes to reference objects.

If I understand your situatuation correctly - You would have to re-connect your hi-res to your low-res skeleton every time you brought the hi-res into a new file. You could probably script this fairly easily - but it would defeat the purpose of having the two separate files....you could just have your hi-res mesh on a separate layer and leave it turned off - thereby using one file and avoiding the switching issue.

you just need to make sure that all of the "control" objects - the animatable objects - are the same in your low-res as in your hi-res files. Then when you "replace ref" in your reference editor - you won't lose any data and the hi-res will just replace your lo-res.

clear as mud!


--magilla

[fadegboye]

Thanks guys...it seems to work for now...but I am sure I will be back for more help!

Cheers people!.....:)

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