Hi in 3dsmax , I need to attach two object that are rigged to different bones of the skeleton , how can I do to preserve the skin modifier ? when I attach one or the other body part the attached one looses it's skin for the vertices , getting all the vertices set to 1 instead than the several fractions that made the rigging smooth for that part....

Just to be clear you have 2 skinned objects, and you need them to be one skinned object?
This is pretty easy.

1. Go into Figure Mode or Skin Pose, and set the slider to Frame 0.
2. Select both objects.
3. Go to Edit | Clone
4. Pick Copy and click OK.
5. Select the new copies and convert to edit poly to collapse the modifier stack.
6. Attach one object to the other.
7. Select your object and add a Skin Wrap modifier.
8. Click the Add button in the modify panel and add both of the original objects by clicking on them. (They should still be skinned.)
9. Change Deformation Engine to Face Deformation.
10. Check Weight All Points
11. Click on Convert to Skin.

Optionally, you can skip clicking Convert to Skin and when you update the skinning the two original objects the skin wrap will update as well. If you are exporting to a game engine, you do need to convert to skin though.

Thankyou for your answer....

Yes I need to attach two gauntlets on a body to make oneobject , but I have painted the vertices manually one by one with the table , is that ok for this method the same?

This should work just fine. The skin wrap doesn't care if you used Envelopes, Paint Weights, or manual assignments. As long as there's a Skin modifer, you can Skin Wrap it.

How can I do the reverse?

I need to detach parts of the object and I want that they both retain the skin modifiers but usually when I delete polygons and stuff the whole thing gets messed up ...

Doing the reverse is very similar. Just clone your model and collapse the stack. Detach your model as needed. For each new object (one at a time) apply a Skin Wrap modifier and pick the original skinned model. (Be sure to use Face Deformation and Weight All Vertices.) Then click Convert To Skin.

Works even if I "delete polygons only" ?

I cant find figure mode button and the skin pose I can't check the little box why?

The Biped plugin skeletons use figure mode. If you aren't using that plugin then you won't have figure mode.

Also, if your bones don't have a Skin Pose applied set you can't enter Skin Pose Mode. You can skip that step. It's there because I didn't know if you were using the Biped plugin.

No I dont have that plugin but in the animation rollout I pushed enable skin pose but nothing happens and in the hyerarchy tab the skin pose mod checkbox is still grayed out ...

Like I said, you can skip step one.

Just to clarify why Skin Pose Mode is grayed out:

An object needs to have the Skin Pose applied before you can enable Skin Pose Mode. Select your object(s) then in the Main Menu at the top go to Animation > Set as Skin Pose.

You'll notice Skin Pose Mode is now available.

if you want to split a skinned mesh into its component parts and retain the weighting it's much easier to simply duplicate it, go under the skin modifier to the base poly/mesh and delete the bits you don't want to keep.

Originally Posted by poopipe

if you want to split a skinned mesh into its component parts and retain the weighting it's much easier to simply duplicate it, go under the skin modifier to the base poly/mesh and delete the bits you don't want to keep.

this just messes up the skin tough ....

no it doesn't - I did it 42 times on wednesday and everything was fine

May be it's different on the mesh I am trying to edit? the imported models from skyrim usually get imported with a messed up skeleton, if I do not touch much the model it's fine but if I delete parts the stuff gets rerigged according to how the bones are placed and get messed up ...

ah - i think you need to set all the weights to be "modified" - baking weights will probably do that or you can set the modified flag manually in the weight table.

i never use envelopes so i forget these things

And how you rig?

Originally Posted by NAIMA

this just messes up the skin tough ....

You're not exiting the modifier properly. you need to deselect all sub-objects (vert, edge, poly ect) then click on the modifier label "edit poly" then click on the skin modifier label.

Sub-object selection is passed up the stack, if you have one vert selected and then improperly exit the modifier only that one vert will be skinned.

It can also be messed up if your skeletal skin pose doesn't match the original position of the mesh. You should always set your "skin pose" (select bones, hold alt, right click, set skin pose/assume skin pose) so you can always pop whatever rig in and out of the original skin pose.

Originally Posted by NAIMA

And how you rig?

everything Mark says is true. I forget people don't always know these things.


to answer your question -

the first thing I do is turn off envelope display and override every weight in the skin with a value of 1 to its nearest bone (or 0.5 at joints). I then go through with a test animation blending the weights by hand.

This approach partly comes from game engine work where messy skinning is a performance issue (particularly on mobile platforms) but I also find it a lot easier to decide what to do at a given joint if I know exactly which bones are affecting which verts.

I often see people chasing weights across a mesh for hours because they can't get a good handle on what's affecting what - usually because they've started with envelopes and are trying to tweak so it looks good.

Originally Posted by monster

Just to be clear you have 2 skinned objects, and you need them to be one skinned object?
This is pretty easy.

1. Go into Figure Mode or Skin Pose, and set the slider to Frame 0.
2. Select both objects.
3. Go to Edit | Clone
4. Pick Copy and click OK.
5. Select the new copies and convert to edit poly to collapse the modifier stack.
6. Attach one object to the other.
7. Select your object and add a Skin Wrap modifier.
8. Click the Add button in the modify panel and add both of the original objects by clicking on them. (They should still be skinned.)
9. Change Deformation Engine to Face Deformation.
10. Check Weight All Points
11. Click on Convert to Skin.

Optionally, you can skip clicking Convert to Skin and when you update the skinning the two original objects the skin wrap will update as well. If you are exporting to a game engine, you do need to convert to skin though.

Hi I was trying to use your method butI have a problem ... as u know in skyrim there is this rotated skeleton as I showed you anyway I have my pants , I import another mesh that has skinning already to speed up things I follow ur minitutorial and add skinwrap after having set skinpose etc.... I didnt clone as I do not have to make a copy or attach ... well this is the result as bones overlap and the skin is not good altough on the original model it is ... any idea why?

http://img860.imageshack.us/img860/4993/seetrought.jpg

those are envelopes not bones- they're displaying like that because of the bone orientations

you can edit them by moving the ends or just turn them off if you're going to weight manually

I didnt want to use when I created the skin it already got parts of the other leg couse the envelopes where already there.....

I know this is an old thread but it partains to exactly what I'm struggling with now. Let me start from the beginning in explainning me issue.
I'm trying to port a model from The Witcher 2 into Skyrim. The witcher model had a different skin pose(?) from the one Skyrim models use but there was not skeleton, no rigging. So that's just to say the arms were up higher. Also the outfit was separated into about 10 separate pieces.

I started out but moving vertices around to get them to line up with a body that was rigged to the Skyrim skeleton. My mistake was not attaching the objects and welding vertices beforehand. I make a skin wrap for each object and converted each to a skin. Added my dismember modifier and was able to get it into the game. Now it was almost perfect but I had some issues around the shoulder where the vest part was not attached to the sleeves part. That's when I realized my error and so I went back to the original Witcher 2 model and made everything one piece and welded the verts together so that it would all deform together.

Then I imported the model that I had already got working in game, which by the way I had already done a ton of weight painting to the fix weird little issues, and used the method Monster described at the start of this post to transfer the weighs to the new, fused model. Oh yeah, I also moved the bones of the skyrim skeleton manually up to the position of the fused witcher model before I did the skin wrap so that everything would be in the right place.

So it seemed to go okay but there are two problems. First, while the model looks fine after I converted to skin, as soon as I import a test animation (running, sneaking, or the skyrim static pose) part of the left leg collapses like a pancake. Any idea why that's happening?

So ignoring that and just trying to get a .nif exported, I crash 3ds max every time I try to export a nif and I have no idea why this is happening, because I never had that problem throughout the initial process of getting the mesh with separate objects out of the game.

Anybody know what's going on? or what I might be doing wrong?