Hi,

i was wondering if it is possible to rearrange the stock skeleton without making a complete new set of animations.
My problem is that i have a model that has longer arms than the stock skeleton. Everything else is just fine. I tried to scale just the arms down, and now it is ok. But the elbow is still at the wrong position. Any ideas how to do that?? Or is it impossible??

You should make the skeleton fit the mesh, not the other way around.
When you start adjusting the mesh you might throw off the proportions.

Remove the keys from the bones you're adjusting.
Adjust bone chain lengths with the ppg or Move Joint tool.
Set your envelope and edit the weights
Key the bones that you adjusted
Export a new basepose.msh
Munge your new basepose and call it in your ODF with SkeletonName = "nameofzaf"


The wookiees are your working examples in the assets if you need reference.

Ok i remade the envelope. This time i did not change the mesh to fit to the model. Removed all keys from the bones, rearranged them, keyed everything i unkeyed.
Exported the model (i hope the envelope is as good as before)
and checked "export animation" "use current frame as basepose" and export it to basepose.msh.

Do i understand you right, that i need to munge a new set of animation and choose this basepose as basepose??


==EDIT==

i tried to munge the animation, but got this problem: The munge_animation.bat looks like this:
I wonder why this does not work, since it did on my old pc.

Overwrite your munge_animation.bat with this and try again: Source
viewtopic.php?f=64&t=30415

I removed that changed line and set the path variable manual. But your solution works and is much better

Thanks a lot


==EDIT==

I still have a problem. The Skelton seams not to work:

https://www.dropbox.com/sc/uddyr8ng35nv ... qArFdRolua

Well, the first thing I notice is you aren't following the wookiee ODFs as your example and you're calling the skeleton before the geometry.
I don't know what else you're doing that might not be working though, not enough information about the steps you've taken.

You also need to give those hands a kung fu grip since this game doesn't use finger bones.

Haha, very funny. Deviss told me that the game crashes and there need to be something wrong with the skeleton. I told him, that everything is fine for me, than i noticed that i used the wrong msh file. Changed it and noticed that the skeleton does not work. Put the Skeleton name behind the geometry name and now it crashes...

My swbfiii.zafbin is about 2KB. Inside my swbfiii folder is only the basepose.msh and the munge.bat (i used the one from the wookies)

My steps for the basepose:

Anakin wrote:Ok i remade the envelope. This time i did not change the mesh to fit to the skeleton. Removed all keys from the bones, rearranged them, keyed everything i unkeyed.
Exported the model (i hope the envelope is as good as before)
and checked "export animation" "use current frame as basepose" and export it to basepose.msh.

[...]

The log is not usefull:


Maybe you want to have a look at my basepose: https://www.dropbox.com/s/chzcgnov5tlww ... 2.rar?dl=0

And yes i changed the hands, but for some reason it is not ingame. But first of all i want the bones and envelope be fine before i make some cosmetics.

What happened here?


Are you adjusting the unit template with bone chains or an imported null skeleton?

the nulls....

Is there a way to repair that without reenvelope everything??

I really recommend you use the unit_template from psych0fred for this, you'll have a lot less to keep track of as you adjust bones.
I wouldn't attempt adjusting null chains like this without first applying temporary constraints.

Keep what you got in the scene but put it under a model then duplicate the stormtrooper mesh and freeze and cut it from the hierarchy so it is child of scene_root then hide the entire original hierarchy.
Bring in the unit template and freeze all geometry and delete the override_texture mesh then adjust the bones however you want.
Envelope the copied stormtrooper mesh to it, and finally GATOR the weights from the original stormtrooper mesh to the new one and do the same for the sv mesh and you should be golden.

Thank you, but i need your help once more. I found this: https://sites.google.com/site/swbf2modt ... roFiledump and downloaded the templates.zip. After i imported the dotXSI:

I don't know whats going on in that image. You should be using psych0fred's unit template from here:
http://www.secretsociety.com/forum/downloads/
^Unit_template_Beta.zip

pretty sure i know what happend. You said "put everything under a model". I put everything under a null and thought that's the same. Now with importing the emdl there is a null looking grunddummy that is called model when i put the mouse on it. Where can i find such a model?? I searched through the whole Model>Get menu, but haven't found.

An other question, in the readme (yes i read it ) psycho said that i need to do something with layers. I know absolutely nothing about layers. So do i need that? and where can i get some more informations about that layers??

Anakin wrote:pretty sure i know what happend. You said "put everything under a model". I put everything under a null and thought that's the same. Now with importing the emdl there is a null looking grunddummy that is called model when i put the mouse on it. Where can i find such a model?? I searched through the whole Model>Get menu, but haven't found.

Select dummyroot and go to:
Create > Model > New Model
under the Model module on the left of the UI

The reason you do this is so you can have objects in the same scene with the same name, or else a "1" will be appended to everything you brought in last.

Anakin wrote:An other question, in the readme (yes i read it ) psycho said that i need to do something with layers. I know absolutely nothing about layers. So do i need that? and where can i get some more informations about that layers??

No need for layers here, just hide everything except the bones.

The GATOR thing seams not to work.

I selected the mesh under the template model, then the one under the other one. But the gator says, it is not possible, because there is already a envelope operator. and if i do not envelope the new mesh to the template bones first, and copy the envelope, the bones from the other model will be taken... Any ideas how to handle that??

If Mod Tool didn't have limitations such as saving out weight presets then I would just tell you to save one from the original and apply it to the new one.

EDIT
Hold on, i'm gonna get you a weight preset file for your Stormtrooper.
http://www.mediafire.com/download/msw4q ... preset.zip

Envelope the mesh to the new skeleton and press ctrl+e then go to File>Load Preset and apply it.
Tested and 100% working in Mod Tool 7.5!

Haven't seen your edit. But thank you anyway. So i reenveloped everything and tried to make it even more accurate now.
But the SWBF still crashes. And it does not simply close. it says the exe doesn't work anymore. This animation envelope is a big ****. I never get this working

I really hope you still can/want help me. Here is the latest msh, basepose, and animation.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/oleq6yhzh16hg ... 4.rar?dl=0

How do you make these presets?? I'm sure itt can be very useful for me.....

Your bones have no keys, when you export with ZETools you must have Export Animation ticked so it grabs that information.
You also don't need that GroundDummy null, go ahead and remove that to eliminate it from the equation.
Correct those 2 things and try it again.

As for creating weight presets, I used Softimage 7.5 Advanced which is exactly like Mod Tool 7.5 but without the insane limitations.
PM me for details.

Ok. Now it does not crash anymore

But it doesn't work either.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ednrv03hj9r8c ... 5.rar?dl=0

The sample you uploaded is deforming pretty much the same as the one on the left of your image.
Clean and munge to make sure the latest version is being munged.
I see you're using soft skinning around the elbow but i've never been able to get it working despite the docs saying it's possible to have up to 3 bones per vertex with -softskin in an option file.