Physique and biped question.

[LeJomphe]

Where else can one start a post with... "Well, I was boning my horse ... ". (never heard that one before I'm sure /images/graemlins/smile.gif )

Actually, I just realised after physiquing and setting the bone influences on the model that I accidentally duplicated the head nub somewhere along the line.

Is there any way to modify the structure of your skeleton in 3ds max without losing all your vert assignations ?

[ether]

try using the physique tools set created by Anthony Delen - http://www.anthonydelen.com/script_physique.htm

You can save out your vert assignments using this script and re-structure your skeleton then import the wieghts back in, providing that bone/biped names stay the same

[LeJomphe]

Thanks, I'll give it a shot.

While we're at it, is there any better way to find a vertex with a zero weight assignation other than to click all the verts one by one and look ?

[Snowfly]

sure, animate the skeleton forward from the COM, and any vert that gets left behind isn't weighted. /images/graemlins/smile.gif i get the feeling you were looking for something more along the lines of a vertex weight table though.

[FatAssasin]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again... Unless you're forced to by engine requirements, use Skin. It's much easier to work with, especially when making change to the skeleton.

[LeJomphe]

Would using skin with a regular Character Studio biped skeleton cause problems ?

[FatAssasin]

Not at all, it works with bones, bipeds, even splines. Give it a go.

[LeJomphe]

Cool.

Just ran into yet another detail that hopefully someone will know the answer to. I'm looking for a way to copy poses or keyframes from one frame to another on non biped bones. Does one actually exist or is that functionality only on character studio skeletons ?

For that matter can you save animations when you're using regular bones like you would when using a biped ?

[FatAssasin]

There's nothing built into Max, AFAIK, to let you copy and past poses on regular bones. But with some of the new features in 7 I wouldn't be surprised if someone comes up with a script to do that.

Paul Neale has a script that will let you copy and paste poses for custom attributes, but that's not the same as copying the rotations on the actual bones. Here's the site though if you want to check it out: paulneale.com (http://paulneale.com/)

You can save the animation from a character if you use the Character Assembly tool. Look up "character" in the Max help doc.

[Snowfly]

You can try Anipose. Best described as a pose manager...
You can save poses for specific sets of bones and save them out to external files. Don't know if it will work with max 6 and above...

http://www.chuggnut.com/scripts/anipose/ver3/Anipose%20install.mzp