Rigging, weighting, etc...

[roy12]

Hi there.

Lately I've been trying to get into Blender, editing meshes and stuff.

I've got the part of editing and fitting a mesh to a certain body fine. However, the rigging part is the one that confuses me. I'm stuck after finishing this:

Every tutorial I've read is either outdated or lacks pictures, and I've been literaly all day fitting the mesh, so I wouldn't like to give up.

Can anyone explain me in detail how to do it? Or is there a detailed tutorial made with the latest Blender?

I've already tried throttlekitty's tutorial, obliviontextures.wetpaint.com's easy rigging, and the construction set wiki one. In all of them, I get stuck at the part where I have to import the Skeleton, one of them says I have to delete the armature, others don't say anything about it... Basically, My Brain is Full of Fuck.jpg...

[Grumpf]

Dunno about blender but when you import your clothes from nif file there's an option to import the skeleton as well. If not, start by importing the skeleton then import a vanilla piece of clothing. Check the skinning and how the different bones enveloppes weight on vertices, this is what you want to do.

First thing first, import skeleton and weighted cloth and check if you can see the skinning.

[Grumpf]

For this, the easiest would be to simply copy the skin from another similar robes, it should work for 99%...

[roy12]

Would the skinning be the Armature?

Also, I'm having a lot of problems with the Materials. Blender's material system makes me cringe. When I export as a nif just to see if I can actually see it in NifSkope, I can see the meshes, but the robe mesh gets exported with no material, and the shadow/lighting is all messed up.

I don't know if I should just export to obj and work the materials in Metasequoia...

[Grumpf]

Mmm unfortunately there it'll depend on your nif exporter, I can't find the comparison page anymore. Nif tools only work on 32bits plateform though, dunno if Blender comes in two versions...

By shadow lighting you mean vertex color property?

If you are not an expert in Blender, you can use Max for free providing you're a student.

Cheers!

[Khadir]

If it helps any, this is the base body file I use for posing/animation in Blender. It's a HGEC female body, I think the default D-cup one.

[roy12]

GrumpF: I don't know if it was the vertex colors, since I'm not even sure what the hell was going on. I decided to export to Wavefront and work the materials in Metasequoia. I still couldn't rig though...

Khadir: I don't know if that would work, since I adapted the robe to a less-than-A-cup body (since it's supposed to be Schierke's robe from Berserk).

Anyways, thanks anyways. I'll try again today with the bone copy script to see what I get...

[Khadir]

Roy, tell me which body and head mesh exactly you're using as the base, which skeleton and which textures (ideally with location links where I can download them), and I can create a Blender file with all of them stitched together properly and ready for weight copying and posing for you.

It's really just a matter of importing all the meshes, joining them properly and deleting their build-in skeletons (armatures), then importing the skeleton.nif and making it their parent properly. Blender can be just a little overwhelming with all the options it gives you.

[roy12]

Khadir: Thanks a lot for the help.

It's available in the SetBody 2ch Version mod.

The dir would be Data\Meshes\characters\Bombshell\HGEC\HGEC_RoriSyota

The nif files would be FemaleUpperBody and LowerBody (my custom mesh covers both of them). That's probably one of the parts that confuse me, since all the meshes I've seen seem to be separated in some way.

Here's the blend of my "finished" mesh, although I still have to cover the lower part of the skirt so the erased body sections can't be seen: http://www.mediafire.com/?107wx8cn5gyqbu2

EDIT1: Sorry, didn't read correctly, I'll upload everything else.

EDIT2: Here, all the resources compressed in a single 7zip: http://www.mediafire.com/?a729baxe9inuyar

The password is 2242415635

[Khadir]

There we go: Body_roy12.blend

The file is a bit bigger (16 MB), because I included the skin DDS file into it. You can toggle this for your own needs with the "pack/unpack this image" button in the (right) UV editor panel.

I imported the objects into different layers: The two NIFs as separate objects are at layer 3 if you want to use them for reference, a merged version as single object at layer 2. The skeleton is set to be the parent of both (you can use the pose mode when you have it selected to see how your robe, and the bodies, deform), and available on layers 1, 2 and 3. The idea is to import your robe to layer 1, and only make the bodies visible when you need them (shift-clicking on the layer buttons toggles their visibility). Don't forget to make the skeleton the parent of the robe: Right-click on the robe, then on the skeleton to have both selected, hit [sPACE] while over the render window, then Object -> Parent -> Make Parent ... (or just hit [Ctrl]+[P]), pick "Armature", and then likely "Don't create groups".

[roy12]

Thanks a lot!

However, it seems the .nif file Blender exported isn't working correctly or something, I can't see the robes in-game.

I copied the bone weights from the full body to the robes and the skin sections in my mesh with the copy bone weights script, and then parented them to the skeleton. Then tested in pose mode if the robes and body sections deformed by moving the skeleton and they did.

Next, I erased both of the reference bodies, selected all and exported the nif. I can open it in nifskope, but I can't see it in-game, the character wearing it looks invisible at all the parts the robe's supposed to hide...

Maybe it is because the body sections are all in a same tristrip, and the robe all in one tristrip?

I know I'm closer than before, so thanks again.

[Khadir]

This might be a simple texture problem, or indeed a wrongly exported NIF. If you send over the NIF file, I can check.

[roy12]

The textures did show up in nifskope though.

Here's the .nif:

/>http://www.mediafire.com/?qkh92lbd637b21r

Also, here's a blend with the meshes already rigged. Notice how in Pose mode the meshes move with the bones. I read somewhere that if Oblivion didn't like the skeleton, it wouldn't work. This skeleton however, is Corronera's Maximum Compatibility one, and it's the one I use in the game...

/>http://www.mediafire.com/?0fhbpbttbjte2b9

[Khadir]

The problem I see about the NIF (though I get it too all the time, which is why you should always check with NifSkope if the exporter did everything right) is that the robe is a child of the scene root, instead of scene root itself. To fix, open the "Scene Root" NiNode, right-click on the one below it ("Scene Root.00") and pick "Block -> Crop to Branch" from the menu. Rename the new head NiNode to "Scene Root", save the NIF and try again.

[roy12]

It worked!

I tested the Robes in-game and they move nicely without clipping issues!

Thanks again, now I know how to properly copy bones. Now onto fixing the character itself and changing the robes texture .

[roy12]

Damn, I've got a new problem.

I had to do the bones stuff again because the UV map was pretty bad, and the lower part was still invisible.

I finished the lower part, redid the UV map, and then did all the bone process...

However, this time I've got this problem:

Why could this be happening?

EDIT: Ok, nevermind, I must have done something wrong, it seems it was because I was using the already trimmed body from the old nif. I trimmed the one in layer 2 and used it to export, and everything went fine. Thanks again.

[Grumpf]

Looks like the vertices order was changed. It can happen sometimes and usually it's best to roll back to previous version.

For Max you need to use reset Xform from time to time...

[roy12]

Hey there, sorry for reviving the thread, but I think this quite goes in here.

I'm having a problem with the Bone Weigth Copy script. Said problem is: It does shit. Nothing. Nada.

I'm trying to copy the weights from Roberts Male v5 Bulky body to a modified Iron Armor cuirass. I select both in object mode, use the script, it "runs", but when I check the cuirass, it has no groups, nothing at all was copied.

It's pissing me off, because it seems to randomly work depending on the meshes. I uploaded the blend with the textures packed, in case it helps.

/>http://www.mediafire.com/?jw27p9rqqfruf30

[Grumpf]

If you can post it to a format I can use I may help but I'm a max user.

[roy12]

I tried again, and it seems the script requires you to select every face to be weighted in edit mode before selecting both meshes in object mode. I think I understand why. I'm gonna try again with the armor, if it works, great, if it doesn't, I'll see if I can export to 3dmax.

[Khadir]

I tried again' date=' and it seems the script requires you to select every face to be weighted in edit mode before selecting both meshes in object mode. I think I understand why. [/quote']

Pretty much, yes. This is so that you can only re-weight parts of the mesh. This is especially important for meshes with "hard" geometry (like armour plates), which shouldn't twist and turn with the bones, just stick to one. BWC won't help you with those parts.

[roy12]

BWC did work by doing this, but I see why the plate bending would be ridiculous. What should I do in this case? The armor does show some skin though.

[Khadir]

BWC did work by doing this' date=' but I see why the plate bending would be ridiculous. What should I do in this case? The armor does show some skin though.

[/quote']

Ideally, the rigid parts of the armour should have a single (bearing) bone assigned to them at 100% influence. For most cases, this should work fine. If that doesn't work so well (for example, for shoulder pads), they should at least be rigged such that they bend as little as possible; you'll have to experiment a bit to get to that point.