Help with Mesh

[Guest]

Does anyone know what to do with a custom head mesh in 3ds Max? What do I skin wrap it to rather than copying the skin from the vanilla head mesh?

 

Thank you in advance.

[Guest]

Please anyone?

[Bob Minos]

Are you trying to rig it? Use Skin Wrap and then have an existing rigged head in the scene to pick for the Add option.

 

This means you must import the existing rigged head mesh into Max and include the skeleton. The skeleton needs to be in the same folder when you import the head mesh.

Then import or merge the head you need to rig.

Select the head you need to rig and hit Skin Wrap, then in the new tool options click Add and then select the rigged head.

Wait for it to show in the little window just above Add, then turn off Add.

Now scroll down and check the box that says Weight All Points. Normally it will do this, but I've seen times where it didn't.

Then click Convert to Skin.

 

Once that's done, you can delete the Skin Wrap and leave the Skin.

Then... you must make sure the neck seam has the exact same weights so you don't get any gaps during movement.

 

First, click the original rigged head and then in the right column for the Skin, you will see Edit Envelopes. Turn that box on, then click the little box below... lemme open Max real fast... Yeah okay lol. Got it backwards... no foccee yet. So there is a little box below Edit Enveloped that says Select Vertices. Check that.

 

Now select each vertex around the neck seam one at a time.... wait, before doing that, scroll down the right tool column list and look for a little wrench icon. Click it and a pop up will have all sorts of value boxes in it and an empty window below. Move it to the side.

Now select each vertex around the neck seam one at a time and srite down exactly what you see in that little window.

 

It should have things like NPC_RClavicle0.25 and the like

The names are the bones used ( never more than 4 per vertex for TES games ) and the number is the weight assigned, or how much influence it has on that vertex.

 

Write down the values for each bone assigned to each vertex around the neck. Once you are done, turn off Edit Envelopes.

 

Now select your newly rigged head and hit the Edit Envelopes and Select Vertices options and select each vertex to cross reference the weights.

If the weighting is different, or if a bone from the original is not present, it's an easy fix.

If the number is different, you can manually type the value into the window just below the buttons that say 0.1 0.25 0.5 etc. Just type in exactly what the value should be and hit Set Weight.

 

If the bone is not in the list, then look through the bones in the right tool column. There will be a window of all of  them used around the middle of all the tools.

Select the missing bone, then type the weight value in the wrench pop up and hit Set Weight.

 

IF... and this does happen a lot. IF you set one weight and it changes the other weights to something they should not be, just set those other weights again. You may have to do this a few times.

 

Anyway, just repeat for each of the vertices in the neck seam and you should be good.

Turn off Edit Envelopes and then SAVE SAVE SAVE!

 

You can copy and paste the dismember from the original onto yours, but expand it and make sure all polygons are selected. If you have two dismember entries, like hairlines do, you can have one selection selected, then just click the other dismember entry and click the Selected unused. There is also  a Fix Duplicate button just in case.

IF a polygon is left completely unselected, or two a poly is selected for more than one dismember, Max will crash on export. But in this case, it's just one dismember, so all is good. Just make sure all polys are selected. You can hit CTRL A or just drag around the whole head.

 

Okay, SAVE!!!

Now hit export selected with your head selected and use the nif kf option. If I remember correctly, by default what you need is checked.

 

This is Mr. Dave by the way. I hijacked my buddy's account since he asked if I could post some help lol.