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Skeleton vs. Biped

by Nmuta Jones · in Artist Corner · 11/21/2005 (2:43 pm) · 3 replies

I just bought the girl pack, and I am looking at the skeleton for the mesh. I have been using character studio for a while now, and I am wondering if I should switch to start using a custom made skeleton like the one in the girl pack due to the fact that I am getting a lot of (and have always gotten a lot of) distortion around the joints, especially with the elbows, when using character studio, despite many variations of weighting vertices around the elbow.

When using character studio, I've used "helpers" for cinematics but they're not bones and won't export to an engine. Yet since character studio is widely used in games (I think), then it should follow that I should be able to get pretty good rigs using it. So it must be some problem with how I'm setting up my files.

I see in this Girl pack file that there is a "helper" bone in the elbows.....what is the answer to this when using Character Studio?
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Torque Owner Magnus Blikstad
#1
11/21/2005 (6:02 pm)
You can link whatever extra bones you want to your bipeds, as long as they're linked properly into the heirarchy they will get exported. Newer versions of characterstudio (after max6? or maybe only in max8, not sure. I just got my max8 upgrade and completely skipped max7 =) also have settings for "twist bones" for the arms and legs that should help slightly with the elbows/shoulders/wrists. (I haven't checked if the twist bones are linked in a proper way for exporting to dts though, but they probably are).

Torque Owner Nmuta Jones
#2
11/21/2005 (8:06 pm)
After some tinkering I have found that making sure vertices are NOT normalized, and using a few rigid verts here and there is greatly helping.

But I will look for these options you are describing. Where do you see "twist bones"? We have Max 7. Thanks.

Torque Owner Magnus Blikstad
#3
11/21/2005 (8:14 pm)
Not normalizing vertices is probably a BAD idea. I'm pretty sure the dts exporter assumes all vertices have a total weight of 1.0.
The twist bones seem to be a new feature in max8 unfortunately.