[SOLVED] Modifying head mesh.

[vegaorc]

Hello everyone!
I'm attepting to modify this orc head by Room207 (I have permission to do so). To make this possible I followed this tutorial, however the result came out like this:

 
As you can see from the pictures, the left side of his face looks completely distorted while the right side looks perfect. He also does not blink his eyes.
Can someone please tell me where did I go wrong? 
Thanks in advance!

[junkacc]

Why can't I load the pictures?

 

Anyway, I presume you've edited half of the head and mirrored it. Nope, can't do that.

Your head is mangled by the tri and egm files which expect the vertices in a strict order. If you delete or add any vertices the order changes and you get a mangled head, and that includes deleting a whole half and mirroring.

 

Strictly speaking, you can add vertices if they get appended to the end of the vertex array,,, but deleting is a bad idea. Not even removing doubles.

 

Hope that helped.

[vegaorc]

I just realized the links were broken. I've fixed that.

About what you said, I did remove the doubles because the tutorial said so... Maybe that's the problem! I'll go check it out when I can, thank you.

[movomo]

That tutorial is wrong, iirc. Removing doubles is bad, badbadbad. Probably the author just wanted to say that you have to check if the vertex count of both original nif and imported obj should be same.

[vegaorc]

Not removing the doubles made the trick, however I have another issue.

 

The back of the head has more noticeable seams compared to the original mesh, did I do something wrong or is this something I have to live with? I'm not experienced with this at all... So I'm sorry for sounding like such a newbie.

 

Here's a comparison:

 

 

 

 

[junkacc]

you shouldn't recalculate normals on non-manifold vertices. Actually, read this.

[vegaorc]

you shouldn't recalculate normals on non-manifold vertices. Actually, read this.

So what should I exactly do with that? I didn't quite understand, sorry.

[junkacc]

1. Patch your blender so it doesn't auto-recalc normals everytime you look at it funny

2. After you're done editing and you think recalc normals will make your mesh look better, deselect the non-manifold vertices before recalculating normals.

3. If you want the best results, use the seam mender to copy the normals from a head without that seam along the top of the head to your edited mesh. This time you want to select only the non-manifold vertices along the top of the head.

[vegaorc]

I'm kinda completely lost at the moment, I guess I don't have enough experience for something like this...

Sorry, thank you for your time, but I'll just probably give up.

[Poontank]

No, don't give it up for good! Shelf it for now and return to it at a later date once you feel like tackling that project again.

 

This might seem too difficult and problematic now. If you return to it in a few months with more experience maybe then you will easily manage to overcome all current issues. Put it on hold. Keep the files in a safe folder.

 

It would be a shame if your work on a promising new Orc variant would go to waste by completely abandoning the project.

[vegaorc]

I was actually going to modify the neck area so it fits the "wideneck" version of the bodybuilder body.

Thank you

[kingkong]

normaly you need to remove doubles and the seams disapears   -  but doing so  you need to run the conformulateur  for file.egm and file.tri   (where in general i am usually doing wrong) 

 

  you can find the conformulator here : http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/9360

[movomo]

Oops, man. Probably there is a better explanation for what you have to do to reduce the head seam lines.

You patched your Blender? You better do so because vanilla Blender always recalculates normals no matter what. 

Now that you have modded Blender, install that "Seam Mender" script as well. That's extremely useful apart from this.

 

Make a copy of the head object. This time, remove doubles of the copied object. (Don't ever do that for the original.) And select all verts, go object mode.

From there select the original head object. Select all verts as well.

Now in object mode, select the original head, then select the copied head, and run the "Seam Mender" script.

Finally, do the same on the neck line(but not entire verts), this time copy normals & locations from the body neck line to the head neck line (That is, select the head first and select the body next)

When you export, unselect the "smoothen inter object seams" option.

[vegaorc]

I, somehow, managed to make it work! Thank you!

[Poontank]

Yay! That's what I call a breakthrough... It became possible because you persisted. To overcome initial hardships and drawbacks.

 

A wideneck version of an Orcish head is just perfect for this race. Recently I just started having bigger and bulkier Nords and Orcs in my game, so if you decide to eventually release this modification I certainly appreciate your work. In general, when I first noticed your conversions for the bodybuilder body I began to develop a preference for this particular male body type. For warrior-class races at least.

[vegaorc]

Thank you, Poontank!

 

By the way, is there any way to make the face symmetrical, since I cannot edit half of the face and then use the mirror modifier?

[movomo]

You can enable "X-axis mirror" option in edit/weightpaint/sculpt mode, it's at the (about) right bottom of the screen.

It only works well if the original mesh is already symmetrical, though. Otherwise... good luck with that.

[vegaorc]

Oh! There it is! How stupid of me! Thank you!
 
Update: Yet another issue comes! 
 
I don't really know how to explain so here's a picture:
 

I really have no idea what's causing this, I tried messing around with weight painting... No results. Any ideas?

[movomo]

That is the weight paint issue. And some normals issue on the body part maybe.. not certain.

 

It looks like that this head has only Bip01 Head bone group. And you applied the "Seam Mender" script, that's why the neck region is stretching. Just my guess. Try copying again/ Or in heads' cases painting from scratch isn't that difficult anyway.

[vegaorc]

I did try to copy it multiple times. For some reason if I copy the normals to the head, it appears completely distorted in game. I also tried to replicate the weight paint of the existing human head for the bodytype I'm working. It didn't work. The default head appears correctly in game... Maybe it's a bone issue? 

[movomo]

Hmm,, I don't know.. sounds strange.

Well then, forget about seam mending for a while and let's focus on fixing this issue first. 

(You can test the weighpainting in pose mode by the way.)

Can you post the blend file?

[vegaorc]

Sure! Here you have it!

 

On the first layer is the head I'm working on, on the second there is the body and the head that fits and works with it. I don't know if you know this or not, but on the wide bodybuilder body there is a tiny "neck band" between the body and the head. I copied the normals from there and the position from the real body neckline, otherwise, it wouldn't work.

 

 

headorcwide.rar

[Poontank]

Call me pathetically sentimental (or seriously mental if you wish), but witnessing threads like this one here just makes me so damn proud of this site.

To see how people from all around the world come together and lend each other a helping hand. Movomo's experience and willingness to help will not only get Johny a kewl new Orc head but also a valuable technical insight and boost in Blender knowledge just from looking at the (hopefully) fixed file.

 

The forum might be full of questionable content to outsiders, but this only from a shallow and biased perspective. Prevalent on LL is this: Awesome members with common interests who are helping each other despite all cultural differences.

 

There. Lame-assed pathos on my part. Still I am proud of both of you. Of Johny for not giving up, of Mo for the help. Keep this up. For the Emperor!

 

On second thought - that should probably be "for King Gortwog!".

[vegaorc]

Thank you, Poontank for your kind words. I agree 100% with what you posted there! You are not being pathetically sentimental

 

Update:  It turns out there were random vertex groups in the mesh that shouldn't be there and they were incorrectly weight painted! I just found out that I've been weight painting things the wrong way.

 

 

Looking better! Now I know what's wrong! I have to weight paint it better though, it has some clipping issues sometimes!

I do think this bodytype fits the orcs better. I like how it looks on them.

[movomo]

Cool. Actually I haven't even downloaded the file yet but you have fixed already.

Good work! Now it's time to mend the neck seam.