Problems with importing fbx files to my character in lightwave

[tpe]

Haveyou got a character ref null in your scene, and are you trying to reimport a character you made in lightwave and then animated in MB? I am only guessing but i think the selection that you saved in MB does not have the same things in as the scene you are merging to in lightwave, for example from the error no character root?

have a look at this thread too...

http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=78277

it may help.

tpe

[Lundgrenr18]

I am doing the tutorial but, when it says:

Select some points
select the apropriate weight map
click on Map/General/setmapvalue
set the apropriate value in box 1
Repeat as necessary

I don't know what it means and how much is the appropriate value. How would you find that out?

[tpe]

Hi there, yes sorry that was not clear, my excuse is the how to was mainly for import export rather than rigging.

I tryed to find a tutorial on the web for adding weightmaps in LW but they all seem to be dead at the moment.

If you have Character animation by Albee there is a very good explanation in that, in the mean time to mate do i will try and explain it.


What you are doing is assigning points to a bone, so as when you move the bone it only affects the points you want.

so the first step is to select the points you want to move for the right shin bone.
so go ahead and select the points you want to move with the shin. then select the weightmap you want to apply, you have probably called it RightLeg (same as the right leg shin bone or something similar).
then you have to say how much you want the points to be affected by the bone, normally (unless it is right on a joint) it would be 100% so as they move in exactly the same way as the bone.

then you could do the same with the foot making it move with a 100% weight too.

then you have a problem with the points in the middle, they have to move with the foot and the leg, so select them, choose the leg weightmap and give them a value of 50% then select the foot map and give them a value of 50%. Then they will move half with the leg and half with the foot and smoothe out the deformation between the two of them. So the apropriate value is how much you want the points to move with whatever bone the weightmap is applied to as a % value

The advantage of setting the use weightmap only is if you have missed any points out you can see it easily as they dont move with anything, and furthermore they do not move in the wrong way as they would do if for example the hand was being affected by the leg weightmaps (very common and quite confusing).

sorry bad explanation, but hope it helps a little

tpe

[Lundgrenr18]

Thanks, that helped alot but there are so many bones, do you know of a default character mesh, either lightwave or MB that has all of the weight maps allready in them so I can see what basic points need to be selected, thanks.

[Rabid pitbull]

well all of the points need to have a value, or they will not move.

the maps that i have made are like this:

head
neck
eye
shoulders
upper arm
lower arm
hand
body
hips
upper leg
lower leg
foot

keep in mind that you need to have left and right leg, arm, hand, and feet maps. depending on the character you may also need seperate fingers and toes. Make sure that no points have a combined value over 100 %. Also try to blend the maps together using this imag as a guidline. imagine this is a top view of a arm. keep in mind that this is weight only for lowerarm/forearm map. And then with the hand and upperarm map would fall off to create a 100% value for each point. Hope this helps, good luck.

http://rabidpitbull.com/temp/weights.jpg

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