14 réponses à ce sujet

[Dalien]

I write this with little hope of getting help... no one really cares about a game that's > 5 yrs. old, especially with the brand-new kid on the block...

 

I've got 3ds max 2013 and Eshme's tools. I barely modified a mesh that I had been working on in Blender previously—after only very minor tweaks I tried to export it and that's when things started to spiral downward. My first export was a mangled mess... vertices flying everywhere in-game. It seemed like a skinning/bones issue... I went back to 3ds max and tried the given solution of importing a similar item (in my case, a female robe) and copying its Skin modifier to my edited mesh. That didn't work—it didn't fix my problem in-game and now my mesh was completely invisible; my character was a floating head.

 

Subsequent attempts to fix this only compounded the problem. After two or three re-imports of the same model to try and copy the skin again, I ended up with 3X the number of bones, collision objects, etc... even though I was careful to delete everything but my modified mesh in the first place, somehow the program kept assuming that there was a skeleton present (even though I couldn't see it anywhere) and it would add all the bones again. All the collision primitives too; 3ds max would create a brand-new set and append incremental numbers to their names, as if they were "copies" even though the originals were no longer present. At one point I tried exporting and got a "too many bones" error, and on the following try the program just froze and crashed.

 

Is there any way I can start over with the process of fixing my mesh, or am I just screwed and have to throw all my work out/start over from scratch?

[DarthParametric]

Eshme's script has a merge function for importing multiple models that share a common skeleton. I covered the process some time back, so I'll just link to that post - http://forum.bioware...-how/?p=4484431  Skip past the GMax stuff and look at points 13 to 17 for info on merging.

 

As to modifying the mesh, define "barely". If you mean you added or deleted vertices, then you will have destroyed the skin/weighting and the mesh will require reskinning. If you are unfamiliar with skinning a mesh, as I gather is the case, then you can cheat a little in Max by using the Skin Wrap modifier to generate a new skin based on an unmodified copy of the original mesh (preferable) or a similar sized/shaped mesh.

[Dalien]

Thanks for your reply, Darth... I will do this now. I did delete some verts but they were duplicates—I'm sure this is what started it all. I had a rough sense of what the problem was—just couldn't fix it with the solutions already given.

[Dalien]

This didn't quite work—it took care of the orphaned nodes/collision objects I had left over from my prior attempts, but the mesh still looks jacked in-game after copying the skin modifier from the same vanilla model. I will most likely need to learn how to skin models properly...

 

I'm running into new and weird problems with every attempt though, not sure why—things I don't touch at all get jacked somehow. On this last export I was told, "Collision object X has too many vertices—over 300". Why would something I didn't touch at all change on its own?

 

EDIT: I found the culprit for this latest problem—somehow a mesh modifier got put on top of one of the collision capsules. I still have the main problem though, and the "quick & dirty" solution won't fix it so it's probably time to start delving more in depth...

 

P.S. I just noticed something else I didn't before. Looks like it may be the actual skin modifier that's causing problems—I am working with a human female model that was tweaked with the "female proportions fix" mod—narrower shoulders, smaller hands. On this latest attempt I copied the skin mod. from the vanilla (i.e. no proportions fix) robe and I can see that the skin modifier is actually deforming the mesh—it's making the shoulders broader and the breasts jut out awkwardly below the armpits. If I click the eye toggle to hide the modifier this is obviously apparent.

[Dalien]

I think I keep making things worse... sigh. This is very frustrating.

 

MessageBox ("Error..\n\nMesh object \""+SkinObj.name+"\" with Skin modifier has invalid Bone entry.\n\n\"No Bones exist for: \n"+(for i = 1 to MissingBones.count do (MissingBones[i]+"\n"))+"\"\nParameters missing..") title:"Error"

 

Again, I am not touching the bones, I am not touching the collision objects... all I did was isolate and tweak the mesh, nothing else. Is there a way to get rid of everything but the poly mesh and marry that to a working model? Is that the solution you offered above? Because it's not working and it continues to get more messed up...

[Dalien]

There's something really bizarre going on... this feels like Twilight Zone-type stuff. Just to see if I was crazy, I started a new empty scene and imported a vanilla mage robe (a different one) that I had extracted from the toolset before with the DATool. All the files were together in their own directory... Eshme's importer brought it all in happily and without complaint... and when I examine this robe's skin modifier, it's completely messed up. Verts on the legs married to the chest bones... ugh. It's not even remotely close. That's just bonkers!

 

I've managed to stumble into the craziest problems imaginable with all this... maybe it's a sign that I need to leave this alone. What a shame... hours and hours of wasted work. And the most ironic part is that I had been working with Blender for a couple of weeks and managed to make some decent custom meshes already... I thought with Max I'd do way better but this is actually a huge step backwards for me.

[DarthParametric]

Importing a vanilla model should work correctly, theoretically. It's not unusual to have the some influence on the upper legs from the chest, but not to high degrees obviously. Can you show a pic of the problem? And what version of Max are you using?

 

As to your earlier posts, you should refrain from simply copying and pasting Skin modifiers. Unless your meshes are identical, you're going to have a bad time. Use a Skin Wrap instead to generate a new Skin.

[Dalien]

I'm using Max 2013... I will upload some pics between tonight and tomorrow.

 

I know that certain bones can influence verts that aren't that close to them... from what I've seen on these models though, things don't look right, but I could be mistaken. I will look into Skin wrap—thanks again, DP.

[Dalien]

Here's what I'm talking about... this doesn't look right at all.

 

[DarthParametric]

Yes, something is definitely awry there. Here's how it should look (click for bigger):
 

[Dalien]

This is what a model looks like with an imported running animation—I have toggled off the skin modifier on this screenshot but the vertices are going awry, while the skeleton clearly moves correctly.

 

Maybe I should change the thread's name to "problems IMPORTING"... I thought it might have to do with the program's units setup so I changed that to reflect the DA tool settings... still no improvement. Does anyone have any clue what's going on here?

 

 

[DarthParametric]

I'm still using 2010, so can only speculate on 2013's compatibility with the script. Changing the units won't have any effect on the script's function though. If this is an unmodified vanilla model that you have extracted from the game files with DATool or directly with the ERF editor, then logic would suggest the problem is with Max. It looks like the bone indices are messed up, so presumably something was changed from prior versions that is causing the script to apply weights to the wrong bones.

 

One option is to try GMax instead - http://www.turbosquid.com/gmax  It's basically a cut-down version of Max 4. It's missing a number of features of modern Max, but the script is designed to work with it. Check out the script's manual for a link to the DDS plugin so you can load the game textures. It will also have info on the workaround for GMax's export limitations (using YAGG).

[Dalien]

Thanks for your replies, Darth. Going from full-blown 3ds max to Gmax seems like a step backwards... this is just what I get for coming to this party so late... oh well. Back to Blender it is.

[Dalien]

Problem solved! Turns out that the whole issue was that I had an older version of Eshme's script installed... I got it from the Nexus site but I didn't realize it was outdated. I found another thread on these boards that brought up this issue, and Eshme had replied acknowledging it and fixing it for Max 2013...

 

I am back in business! For the time being anyway... lol

Special thanks to DarthParametric and Eshme for all their great work!

 

 

[DarthParametric]

Ah, I meant to ask what version of the script you had. Glad to see your problem is sorted.

 

Be sure to post an update if you have any further issues with getting your modified mesh working.