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An introduction to 3ds Max and Skyrim


canderes

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sigh...  i have another small armor issue...

 

i have adapted the armor and it looks great in game at both 0 and 1 weights, but for anything in between, it explodes.

 

i have checked the nifs and all the vertex counts match up.  there are 5 pieces, not including the body: collar, medallion, panty, cuirass and back plate.  the only pieces that are different between the 2 weights are the baseshape and the Cuirass (lower body sliders for both body weights are the same), and the only difference between the 2 cuirass weights is the position of the piece.  i did not scale or move verts when i made the full weight, i just positioned the skulls over the nipples.

 

are there any other parameters or values or settings that can cause an armor to explode between min and max weights?

 

 

 

back

 

 

front

 

 

everything not 0 or 1 weight

 

 

 

 

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When the vertex count is the same usually it has something to do with bsdismember. Make sure you have the same polygons selected for that and that they are using the same slot (skyrim body or whatever). The only other thing I can guess that would cause that aside from bsdismem is that the vertex order changed for one of the meshes. Get both armors into max and use the morpher modifier to make sure that they are able to morph between both stages; if the mesh explodes when you try to do it then the vertex order changed and you will have to create a copy of one of them and then conform it to the shape of the other to get it to work correctly. I never bothered looking at my bone listing too much but you could always do a check to make sure that both armors are using the same bones, I think I had that happen once where my _1 had a bone included that _0 did not and it did cause what looked like an exploded mesh.

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by bones, do you mean the skeleton bones, or the envelope thingies from the skin modifier?  also, i read yesterday, something about the block order in nifskope...  i assume it meant the node order like:

 

scene root

    baseshape

    cuirass

 

vs

 

scene root

    cuirass

    baseshape

 

and another thing...  why the hell do the vertex counts keep changing when i export?  i was trying different stuff to fix the blowout yesterday and i noticed in max, the bra part for both weights had 436 verts (i wrote it down to check against the other weight), but once i exported, one had 1100 or so, and the other had 700 something.  i ended up getting it all to work by attaching all the pieces except the bra into one mesh, then copy/pasting the bra part from my first trial, and copying the merged mesh from the min weight to the max.

 

lastly, i was playing with the leg parts of that armor yesterday.  these parts are from the same nif original that i modified, but i deleted them out in my version. what i did was start from my base skeleton and body like i did before and imported the original armor in.  then, i deleted all the body armor stuff and left just the leg pieces.  exact inverse of the previous modification.  i scaled, and moved, and rotated, and tweaked and got it all just right.  i even managed to separate the jaw part from the rest of the skull that covers the knee area, so when the character walks, the mouth opens and closes (wanted to look into a way to add a glow from inside the mouth at some point).  but once i added the skin modifier and tested it with a walk animation, the entire armor piece went 2-d like the corruptor armor did.  i tried a dozen different things.  nothing fixed it.  on a lark, i imported the original, deleted the skin modifier, moved the piece back onto the leg and re-applied the skin modifier, saved and loaded an animation...  and, ofc, it went 2-d on me.  this is all coming from the same nif i used to create the upper body mod.

 

P.S. sorry for the wall of text

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When you export you need to put 0 in the weld box otherwise it uses 0.01 or 0.1 by default, so things get welded right before they are put on a file.  As for the second thing I'm confused by what you are saying. Upload the scene and I will take a look at it. When you were tweaking the leg parts were you editing the whole object or did you use vertex/poly/element to make the changes?

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im uploading 2 scenes, the original armor nif, and one of the animations i am using to test for clipping.

 

 

 

 

when i tweak, i use vertex and element.  i try to stay away from moving single verts, so i often use soft selection.  for shaping of parts like the panty straps, i usually use scale and rotate on verts so i can get it as close to the baseshape as i can without screwing up the smoothness of the curve.  i usually only use the element/polygon selection when i am prepping the armor to get just the pieces/parts that i want.  its also great for moving a skirt or dress out of the way so i can see if there is a complete panty underneath.

 

Edit:  i have tried re-applying the skin wrap to all 5 versions of that armor that i have.  the same issue occurred with each one.  i also tried applying the new skin wrap to both the leg parts and the breast parts...  the breast parts animated just fine...  but the leg part was still fucked up.  so im thinking the leg piece is different from the other pieces somehow, but i have no idea how to tell.

 

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aww, fuck...  i figured it out....

 

i saw that under the adv paramaters for the skin modifier on the original "ignore bone scale" is checked.  but after i re-apply the skin modifier, it was not checked.  checking the box and importing the animation fixed it

 

sorry for the headaches

 

and its 2012 version of max

 

post-136825-0-34177100-1368910625_thumb.png

 

 

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ok...  this isnt a
problem...  just something id like to do.  i modified the tera skull armor leg pieces and made it 2 seperate meshes.  one covers the calves, the other the knee.  the knee piece had a huge skull on it and i thought it would look cool if i could seperate the jaw from the rest of the skull and attach it to the calf piece so when the character walks, the mouth opens and closes.  for the most part, it works.  but the lower jaw moves way to far away from the upper part and it just kinda looks funny.  i find it acceptable the way it is, but i would like to limit the jaw travel a bit.  is there any way to do this without the skull pieces deforming?

 

also...  when the skull mouth opens, you can see the player's knees.  i thought it would be cool to put a mesh in there to hide the knees, and maybe even create a glow map for it so it glows from inside whenever the mouth opens.  i fucked up something with the glow map (because i know nothing about texturing) and it crashes whenever i try to equip it.  i removed that part from the nif and that armor works as intended without the glow....  but if someone can create the glow map for me, or explain how to get one to work, id really appreciate it.

 

the piece that will glow has no other texture on it: it is just meant to be a light source inside the skull, so it shouldnt be any trouble at all for some one familiar with these things.  if you are interested in helping let me know and i can send you the files i have for it

 

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Thanks for the awesome tuts Canderes!

 

I have a few questions about using existing animations and "applying" them to body meshes.

I have a custom ADEC body that I would like to apply to TBBP animation.

Following your bounce video, I made mt_walkforward.kf from the TBBP animation & skeleton and then imported into 3ds alongside the custom body mesh. The body mesh conforms to the skeleton and animation, however there's no jiggle for the butt or boobs despite the bones animation being there.

I suspect that I might have to paint the weight on the body mesh for the skeleton rig but I wanted your opinion on it.

The custom body is the Toosil body mod for ADEC.

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Yeah the mesh must be rigged to those new bones. You'll need to get the default pose for the skeleton and rig the breasts/butt to those 4-8 bones. Most ADEC bodies have the boobs rigged atleast, you can look for the the one that does and copy the skin modifier from that body to the custom body if the vertex count is the same.

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Yeah the mesh must be rigged to those new bones. You'll need to get the default pose for the skeleton and rig the breasts/butt to those 4-8 bones. Most ADEC bodies have the boobs rigged atleast, you can look for the the one that does and copy the skin modifier from that body to the custom body if the vertex count is the same.

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Right on. Any tips for the weighting? It seems the more Abs. Effect I put on vertices, the more it shrinks or expands unevenly. I want the breasts/butt to bounce a good bit (around Abs. Effect 0.7) using the R/L breast bone, unless I could use R/L Breast01 bones.

 

edit: I realized those values are insane! The abs. effect around the breasts are no more than 0.2 at most. I had some success with painting the weights of the Breast01 bones on the custom mesh. Butt jiggle requires painting on the extra Butt bone, not the prebutt on TBBP.

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If you want the effect that dragonfly had on the breasts of his cbbe or whatever it was that he was using you'll want to use two bones. Same goes for the butt, use  prebutt and butt01 or whatever it is that's attached to it; using only one bone results in jerky animations like the ones for the default chsbhc body. 

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I found using rotation noise makes the movement makes it a little more jello like. I would recommend just experimenting with noise controllers, position controllers, and maybe orientation constraints. All that stuff is under the animation menu.

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  • 11 months later...

Odd issue for me here that one of you guys might know the answer too. I tried to connect 3ds Max to my flat screen as a second monitor via hdmi. However, when I do so the zoom in and out goes insanely far away and is basically inoperable.

 

 

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If you're using scroll wheel for zoom reducing the number of lines scrolled in the mouse settings may work, or you could try just throwing a random object on the grid, select it, and press z to focus on that object only. Z also works when nothing is selected and zooms in on the area taken up by all the objects in the scene.

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I've been using Z for zoom and it's made it somewhat workable. Clicking the mousewheel to rotate the object also has the weird zooming effect. Only seems to happen when I connect to the TV. I can use any computer monitor and it's no issue. Overall it's not the end of the world, it works just fine on regular monitors.

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Question of a noob is incomming so pls don't laugh ;d

 

How can i block a node (bone) position? Let's say i want to make a walking animation. I want whole body to move forward but the feet that is currently on the ground i want to stay still.

It can be done by Ik solver, i know but...

i got another problem with ik solvers

 

i made a crouching animation and in 3ds it looks great. Problem is when i export that anim into skyrim all bones that were moved by ik chain doesn't move at all (like there would be no keys on them) - so during that crouch still straight legs simply go through the ground... I'm sure i keyed every bone for every frame but that does nothing.

What the hell have i missed?

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did u bake the animation? u have to collapse the IK controlled bones (=baking) and remove the IK chain helpers before u export. in 3ds, in the motion tab with relevant bones selected, there is a subtab 'trajectories' and inside it an option to collapse, which will fill those bone keyframes in order for them to maintain the same trajectory as if they were still controlled by IK chain helper. u can then delete the IK helper and bones will still describe the same motion and be exportable.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 3 weeks later...

Can I ask how can I edit and modify multiple meshes of an armor all together? This because edit a single mesh and make it correspond with others is very difficult.

You can attach all the meshes together into one object with the attach button under edit poly. After you are finished making changes to the model though you will have to separate them into multiple meshes again. If you are trying to get parts of one mesh to fold over other meshes you could try adding an edit poly and using the freeform tools from the graphite bar, so you can move vertices/polys around from one mesh over another mesh.

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