*Reduced* BBP?

[FastestDogInTheDistrict]

Quick query - I *THINK* I may have the answer, but I'd like to run it past you guys...

 

I am seeking a way to *REDUCE* the BBP effect on some of my armours.

 

I know how to remove it altogether, but not necessarily how to simply tone it down.

 

I *THINK* the answer is to set the breast bones' Bone Affect Limit to "1", down from the default of "4" (3dsMax side bars: Advanced parameters > Bone Affect Limit). Is this correct? Will this alone reduce BBP on the armour/body? Or will it have some other Unintended Consequence?

[blabba]

 

I *THINK* the answer is to set the breast bones' Bone Affect Limit to "1", down from the default of "4" (3dsMax side bars: Advanced parameters > Bone Affect Limit). Is this correct? Will this alone reduce BBP on the armour/body? Or will it have some other Unintended Consequence?

 

I'm no expert, but don't do that I believe that just changes the amount of bones affecting that vertex (default is 4 which is also max)

 

Instead under the skinwrap modifier look to change the 'strength' of the Breast bones on the breast area (reduce the number, max is 1.0)

[FastestDogInTheDistrict]

 

 

I *THINK* the answer is to set the breast bones' Bone Affect Limit to "1", down from the default of "4" (3dsMax side bars: Advanced parameters > Bone Affect Limit). Is this correct? Will this alone reduce BBP on the armour/body? Or will it have some other Unintended Consequence?

 

I'm no expert, but don't do that I believe that just changes the amount of bones affecting that vertex (default is 4 which is also max)

 

Instead under the skinwrap modifier look to change the 'strength' of the Breast bones on the breast area (reduce the number, max is 1.0)

 

 

Hmm... what about for meshes - such as a body mesh for example - that are *already* skinned, and have no Skin Wrap modifier present?

[blabba]

 

Hmm... what about for meshes - such as a body mesh for example - that are *already* skinned, and have no Skin Wrap modifier present?

 

 

My bad, just edit the skin modifier and edit use the edit envelope to edit the specifc bone's weight paint.

 

[FastestDogInTheDistrict]

Ah crap - so I'd need to manually weight-paint it rather than just adjust the bones' influence?

[blabba]

Ah crap - so I'd need to manually weight-paint it rather than just adjust the bones' influence?

 

It should be possible to adjust the bone influence in 3DSMax, I dunno the exact steps using only 3dsMax (I use a plugin called BonesPro to help me with paints)

[gerra6]

There's another alternative, if you already have a nif with the desired BBP weightpainting that you could use as a template.

 

Download Mesh Rigger

 

Assuming that all of the nifs that you want to modify have the same basic body style. Simply choose a template with that body style and the weightpainting that you want to emulate. The tool can batch convert them with a few clicks of a button.

 

1. Download, Install, and then Run Mesh Rigger

2. Click File->Template Options->Select Template Mesh. Select the nif with the weightpainting that you want

3. Click File->Target Options->...And select either the files or folder that you want to convert

4. Enable 'Replace Weights'. Leave all other settings on the defaults

5. Click OK.

6. Once the tool processes your template nif, it will give you a menu with all bones found on the template. Click 'Select BBB Bones' to automatically select all BBP style bones

7. Click OK.

 

The tool should process all of the selected target nifs and replace any existing BBP boneweights with weights copied from your template nif. By default, they will be saved in /Mesh Rigger/Output/

 

Note: These steps can be used to add BBP to a nif that doesn't have any to begin with, or replace the existing BBP weighting.

[FastestDogInTheDistrict]

 

Ah crap - so I'd need to manually weight-paint it rather than just adjust the bones' influence?

 

It should be possible to adjust the bone influence in 3DSMax, I dunno the exact steps using only 3dsMax (I use a plugin called BonesPro to help me with paints)

 

 

It should indeed... I'm not good with skeletons & bones yet, and Google is being uncooperative.

 

 

There's another alternative, if you already have a nif with the desired BBP weightpainting that you could use as a template.

 

Download Mesh Rigger

 

Assuming that all of the nifs that you want to modify have the same basic body style. Simply choose a template with that body style and the weightpainting that you want to emulate. The tool can batch convert them with a few clicks of a button.

 

1. Download, Install, and then Run Mesh Rigger

2. Click File->Template Options->Select Template Mesh. Select the nif with the weightpainting that you want

3. Click File->Target Options->...And select either the files or folder that you want to convert

4. Enable 'Replace Weights'. Leave all other settings on the defaults

5. Click OK.

6. Once the tool processes your template nif, it will give you a menu with all bones found on the template. Click 'Select BBB Bones' to automatically select all BBP style bones

7. Click OK.

 

The tool should process all of the selected target nifs and replace any existing BBP boneweights with weights copied from your template nif. By default, they will be saved in /Mesh Rigger/Output/

 

Note: These steps can be used to add BBP to a nif that doesn't have any to begin with, or replace the existing BBP weighting.

 

Hey Gerra! So, in order to do this I would need to get a set of reduced-BBP body meshes that seem to be weighted the way I want, & then copy the weighting across, yes?

[gerra6]

Hey Gerra! So, in order to do this I would need to get a set of reduced-BBP body meshes that seem to be weighted the way I want, & then copy the weighting across, yes?

Exactly.

 

Basically, if there is a mesh out there with the weighting that you want, you can use Mesh Rigger to copy its weight to any meshes you want.

 

Now, if there is demand, I could probably toss together a tool that could be used to dynamically increase/decrease the weighting of specified bones by a set percentage.

 

I've got most of the framework for something like that already in place, so it would probably be fairly easy to do.

[gerra6]

I got bored.

 

Here's an experimental tool derived from my Mesh Rigger project.

 

***Modify Weights***

 

1. Download and Unzip Modify Wieghts.7z

2. Run Modify Weights.bat

3. Click File->Target Options->... and select the files or the folder that you want to modify

4. Click OK

 

The tool will begin processing the selected file(s). For each nif it processes, it will open a bone modification menu. This will list every bone found on the mesh with a percentage slider for each. Simply set the multiplier slider to the desired value.

 

Note about weightpainting: An individual vertex can be weighted by a maximum of 4 bones. The total weight of those 4 bones will *always* be equal to 1.0. So, if you start with a bone weighted at .5 and multiply it by 10, its actual weight on a given vertex will be 5/5.5 while the sum of all of the other boneweights will be 0.5/5.5

 

Anyways, with this tool, you can batch modify the base BBP weightpainting for any meshes by a given percentage. This should reduce the BBP movement by a more or less corresponding amount.

[FastestDogInTheDistrict]

Wow! Many thanks Gerra - I will check it out ASAP, & return here to let you know how it goes!

[gerra6]

One thing I should mention. My tools have the ability to automatically detect and correctly process morph meshes. If you tell the tool to process an entire folder, it will do all of this automatically.

 

However, if you instead select specific meshes, the tool will only process the meshes that you select. So, if you are working with morph meshes, I highly recommend selecting both the _0 and _1 meshes. Note: I may modify this behavior in the future to automatically detect and process corresponding morph meshes that aren't specifically selected, but I haven't yet decided if this would be a good idea or not.