Boning and Animating

[Sanada]

I'm attempting to bone and animate a model (not a character) I made to be used in HL2. I've looked at some decompiled models to see how it was done. So far, I've managed to bone it and get some animations working. My problem is that I think I might have boned it wrong. I noticed this when I tried to get a bone to to move possition but it changes the bone it's connected to which I don't want it to do.

What I really need is a tutorial that tells you how to use bones and the skin modifier in 3dsmax. I've looked in the tutorial thread and searched on Google but can't find anything specific.

 

[Retrocide]

Ok, the way you will want to go about riging in 3D studio max is first. Set up the skeleton, start from the pelvis out. After that make sure the model your tryign to rig is oen complete mesh, do this by converting one to an editabe mesh and then attaching each mesh together, once you've done that, click your whoel mesh, goto modifiers, animation modifiers, and then "skin". Add all your bones in the skin tab and check verticy, there after edit the envelopes of each one of them (Keep in mind every verticie has to be assigned a bone for this to turn out right.). The outer part of the envelpoe include the verticies, the inter part increases the wieght of a particular verticie being that 1.00 is the strongest (Red). Then the gray ling in the center has two points that you can move and position, they can go anywhere. now you will capture some unwanted verticies s when that happens go down to the include/exclude tabs and select the ones you dont want or want. Thats all there is to that.

 

[Sanada]

I'm not trying to do a character but you help make some things clear. I think what happened was I didn't rotate the bone or something to a sutable poisistion.

Thanks for expaining the process, simplier than i thought.

 

[WAR_Nuker]

i dont really understand this well either. i got up to the part where im supposed to edit the envelopes. im not sure how to assign the verticies for my model to the bones themselves. i didnt make these bones either....they came with the model. all i wanted to do was edit the way the character looked, but i ended up having to do all this crap in the process. i just loaded the bones and mesh (character) seperately....but in the same file. so they are together...just not intact just yet. its all here i just dont know what to do with it. im also not sure which bones i should assign to which vertex. is there some kind of tutorial on envelopes?

 

[Retrocide]

OK when assigning verticies to the bones through the mesh, the outer part of the envelope includes which particular verticies you want moved, and the inner part gives it the movment strength. Check the verticie box in the skin modifier tab and select the ones you dont want or want andpress exclude/include.

 

[WAR_Nuker]

im having a problem with the movement strength. it seems the only choice is weak (blue) or strong (red). im having a hard time even gettin orange half the time. im playing with the strength and the range and all this and im not really getting any response in that respect. it sucks cause my character is almost completely in red with regards to the envelopes, which means the joints look very odd when limbs are moved. i want to see more greens and yellows in this thing and not all red.