Bones Pro 4 resurrected

#3

Hey Steve, have u tried this bonespro plugin? how does it perform compared to skin?

cheers mate

#4

I’ve only had a quick go so far, but I really like it - it seems to give you a much better initial result, and setting the strength/falloff on the bones seems to be much more intuitive than skin IMHO.

I’ve not had the chance to try anything complex yet, but the signs are good.

They’ve got a demo up there, I’d definitely take a look at it.

Cheers

Steve

#5

I saw that the last day, I was blown away! Gonna try it the first chance I get!

#6

I used to use it quite a bit, but switched to skin during my gamedev days because that’s what was exported out.

I’m not sure if it got much in the way of recompiles so it fell out of use for me, but I’m glad it’s back and being actively supported

#7

BP the only way back in the day, Skin came along and made it not so necessary but it is an excellent tool and looks like more has been added to it. When I last used it it was fast and easy to set up and had a some good tools. With the new ones that they have shown I would say that it could be the way to go once again.

#8

I remember when it first came along in 3DS DOS - what you can deform meshes? With bones?

But you couldn’t see it in the viewport, and motion blur didn’t work with it…

Another world :slight_smile:

#9

Hi Steve, Pen, all,

thanks for opening a tread about BPro4 and for your comments. We have had a quite a lot of work to re-animate it back to life - the core algorythms are, although 10 years have passed, still superior to any other skinning method, yet the interface and the functionality were totaly busted.

I just wanted to point that the next release (in few days) comes with the skin<->bonespro switcher, so one can on-the-fly by working transfer the values, assignements, weights etc from one to other with a click. In the next step, BonesPro brings some new fast, easy and unique skinning workflows, similar to Zbrush painting etc… we won’t let it fall in winter sleep again :slight_smile:

thanks
best reagards

#10

Wow man, it gets even better! I was blown away by the presentations about v4, and despite not having warm memories like the old timers here (cheers!) I was very impressed! Its such a noble (and hopefully lucrative) mission to take the painful fidgeting from skinning! Looking forward to the next version.

#11

Awesome news Igor.

Thanks,

Steve

#12

Hey Igor…a few questions :slight_smile:

so what u’re saying is that we will be able to skin with BPro and then convert all the stuff to regular skin? this would be VERY important indeed :), its VERY importnat indeed to share skinned characters along a certain pipeline that doesnt “accept” a Bonespro workflow… :slight_smile:

if so…how will BP handle the added metabones and such that current skin does not have? will we have to add extra bones to the bits where metabones are?

2nd: I too was a BP user a long time ago, but i dont have my cd anymore with the serial number etc etc…how can i be entitled to an upgrade for the 99euro?

Nildo

#13

wow that sounds awesome, can’t wait to see some preview on those new features, don’t let this one fall asleep again, i remember using it a long long time ago and it was already great

#14

Hi Nildoe!
thanks for feedback - yes, i have it here on my desk, simply press a button, and BonesPro deactivates itself in the modifier stack and put on the top Skin Modifier with 1:1 vertex weighting you have setup in BonesPro. This means you can skin a model with Bpro very fast and smooth, press the switch and export to Maya via FBX, or MotionBuilder etc. We are just waiting for the last beta testers.

BonesPro has also an open API in both MaxScript and C++ we did at the very start, since the game studios wanted to control the whole export process. It exports also ASCII. 3d-io is itself game developer, so we made from the start BonesPro more open and amphibious than any other skin tool on the market.

if so…how will BP handle the added metabones and such that current skin does not have? will we have to add extra bones to the bits where metabones are?

Well, this is actually a problem skin has to handle. I think skin-morph or skinFX are the best way to try to recreate the effect. The disadventage is of course - both doesn’t work with the common engine exporters, FBX or, if i am not wrong, with anything outside of max.
Basically to convert BonesPro to Skin to work further in max makes not much sense, since you lose many adventages (and skin is not faster). For the large pipelines we have developed together with big studios the free BonesPro Proxy. It is a full BonesPro plugin you can get free, so the companies having 2 riggers and 20 animators or outsourcing freelancers don’t need to purchase 22 versions - those who don’t change anything in vertex weights work with Proxy as if they would have full version - you can save, open, animate… whatever :).

2nd: I too was a BP user a long time ago, but i dont have my cd anymore with the serial number etc etc…how can i be entitled to an upgrade for the 99euro?
Nildo

I wrote you the PM

Thanks! :slight_smile:
best regards

#15

Hi Igor! I couldn’t be happier reading your posts. Skinning is a very time consuming process and is always welcome to have better tools for it.

Some questions: Is it multi-threaded? Does it have have dual quaternion interpolation?

Congratulations,
Jr.

#16

This is great news, I will see if I can get some of my up coming clients are interesting in adding it to their work flows. Is there a demo version of it available?

#17

There is a trial up there - but it’s the current version, I don’t know if they’ll update it when they make the amends like the BPro to Skin converter.

The trial is fully functional, apart from you can’t save the resulting files.

Cheers

Steve

#18

just thinking loud here, but could be cool to have inside bonespro some sort of advance muscle tools a la comet muscle…something that was serious and well done since i don’t think there’s anything quite like that in max ( yes yes there’s act , hercules, skinFx…but i don’t think any of those products is as good as the muscle system included in maya, at all… )

#19

Doesn’t BonesPro do muscles already? And what about Catmuscle? AME made a cool CAT reference (not too advertised unfortunately) here: http://download.autodesk.com/esd/3dsmax/cat-help-2010/index.html

#20

Hello Igor…

plz read your pm, i sent one a few days ago…

Nildo

#21

Hi Metamesh!
thanks for the thoughts, that is what get many times a day in my mailbox, as suggestions for the next release.
The idea of having Muscle System in BonesPro is indeed very attractive.

I have the following question:

  1. I have searched for the Comet Muscle in google, but save Torrent and his dead web-site, it seems this thing is either swallowed by maya or it is virtually dead. Is his muscle system now a standard part of maya (sorry i have no idea about maya)?

  2. ACT is since years virtualy dead. We all remember ACT only as a legend, since it was the first half-way working, complicated muscle system for max. There is since Max8, i think, no port anymore. Am i wrong or do you all have it in your everyday production pipe-line in use, with Max2010 64bit etc?

  3. CAT has a kind of muscle system. I must admit, i have learned it only to test the compatibility of BonesPro with CAT. I can only remember it was very complicated, so i have forgotten it the other day. If anybody have used it intensivly, maybe he can offer us more in-depth view of the features?

thanks!
best regards

#22

Hey Igor,
Yes comet muscle was bought by Autodesk and integrated and extended it into maya, if i’m not mistaken that’s what the rigging guys use here at mpc…aparently is pretty good, lots of tools to play with, nice paint tools to assign different attributes to the skin etc etc, apparently it’s a very solid and powerful tool, and in max there’s nothing like that…i think there was a dvd from digital tutors covering the maya muscles? maybe it was a gnomon one, i don’t remember, you could eventually watch it and see all it offers?..
Act as far as I know is not under development anymore…i used to work with one of the guys involved on that and yes, it seems like is dead…

cat has some sort of muscle system, haven’t used for anything really, just to play and make some tests, but is not great, it feels more like a toy than a real serious muscle system ( but as i said i haven’t use it for anything serious…)

cheers!