tiny rigged mesh avatar in maya? how they do it?!

[Larien Snowpaw]

I need to know how to shrink rigged meshes because they are so awesome!  I know there are a lot of tutorials for blender... but what about maya :<

 

I have maya 2012 and I'm sooooooooo close to get my tiny avis so please help me! Needs to know how to shrink, change, setup or whatever the joints or the skin weights. Does it has to do with the exporting setup or the joints scale?

 

[Cathy Foil]

I am using an older version of Maya so it may work a bit differently.

1. Save your weights of your skinned mesh before starting.

2. Select the pelvis joint.

3. Use the scale tool to make the skeleton smaller.  Your mesh will automatically shrink as you scale the skeleton.

4. Select your mesh and Delete its history.  This will detach the skin.

5. Freeze transformation of the mesh just to be on the safe side.

6. Delete the history of the skeleton and do Freeze Transformation on the skeleton.

7. Weight/Skin the mesh to the skeleton.

8. Apply your previously saved weights back to the mesh.

9. Export out of Maya as you normally do and use the Z offset in the upload window to compensate for your now smaller avatar.

I hope that helps.

Cathy

[Larien Snowpaw]

wow! thank u so much! I will try it right away!

 

I hope there were more stuff like tutos for maya like this

SL! be prepared for some tiny avatar cuteness!

[Larien Snowpaw]

I got it!

Everything comes in a group so you have to ungrup everthing and then scale and erase history *even the Bindo pose in the rig* and scale it down so so small its about 2x2 spots in the grid and frezze and export and thats it!

 

wahooooo!

[Roslynd Turbo]

Really appreciate your process @Cathy Foil 

For some of us less saavy Maya users it was a bit lean on the details. I spent about 2 weeks learning how to do this and thought I'd add a followup that fills in some of the blanks in Maya 2012 for people like me that need it.

 

Rigging Part: (if you don't know how)

A) Open the rig skeleton (if you need one there are several linked in the forums), then import all 3 avater mesh parts and ensure they are aligned to the skeleton..

B) Select all meshes and then the pelvis joint of the skeleton last,

     Skin | Bind Skin | Smooth Bind (ensure 'Remove Unused Influences" is not checked)

NB: If the joints are visibly too large/small reduce their radius in:
   Window | Settings/Preferences | Preferences (then under Display -> Kinematics - set Joint Size
   (Recommended sizes: Normal Avatar 0.06 Tiny Av 0.02 Giant Av 0.1)
   Might need to do this again after step 3.
   

Scaling Part:

NOTE: Saving weights only works if you have no overlapping UVs - ie: it won't work on the SL avatar because of the arms and feet)
1. Save your weights of your skinned mesh before starting.
   Select just the mesh parts then
   Skin | Edit Smooth Skin | Export Skin Weight Maps
   (select a folder where the maps which are .iff files will be saved and the .weightMap text file will be placed)
   - You might want to increase their size from 256x256 to larger then that for smaller tiny avs *(still experimenting)

2. Select the pelvis joint (the whole av should change colour: purple for me)

3. Use the scale tool to make the skeleton larger/smaller. Your mesh should automatically shrink as you scale the skeleton.

4. Select ONLY your mesh and Delete its history.  This will detach the skin.

5. Freeze transformation of the mesh just to be on the safe side.

6. Delete the history of the skeleton and do Freeze Transformation on the skeleton.
   Edit | Delete by type | history
   Modify | Freeze Transformations

7. Repeat step B above

8. Apply your previously saved weights back to the mesh.
   Select just the mesh parts then:
   Skin | Edit Smooth Skin | Import Skin Weight Maps
   Select the map file - make sure the files are not flitering for just images (which is the default) or you won't find it.
   You're looking for the name you selected in step 1 with .weightMap as the extension

9. Export out of Maya as you normally do:
   Select all parts excluding skeleton (I use a marquee select)
   Use the DAE_FBX export in Maya 2012 it works for this.
   In the export options under File Type Specific Options | Units - you might want to convert there to have the imported mesh be the correct size when dropped on the ground. This will have no effect when it's worn - (My maya scene is in cm and SL is in m so I convert to metres)
   
10.Import the mesh to SL.
   When you import make sure you go to the upload options tab and check the box to include skin weights and joints or they won't come in.
   You should also use the Z offset in the upload window to compensate for your now smaller/larger avatar.
   

Notes:

My goal was to create tiny avaters using the SL Avater mesh - so I can't save and re-import weights. I just skipped those steps. This leavs you with a big problem. The weights from the smooth skin bind are very bad for SL and reuqire a lot of fixing - that's the part of working on next and will update this when I learn more.

[Daemon Sella]

Hi you all,

and thanks for helping me with the following issue.

I'm trying to rig a custom made avatar with MayaStar.

My custom made avatar is a really big Orc, so fat, with very large shoulders and big arms, legs and muscles.

I tryied to rig it just connecting the skeleton to the mesh shape using the "Smooth Bind Skin" feature from the MayaStar plug-in menu.

Before lauching the "Smooth Bind Skin" command I moved and rotate some nodes of the skeleton with the Maya Move-Tool and Rotate-Tool to aling them to the shape's joints, just because, as it was, the skeleton will never match properly the mesh shape, being the mesh a non-standard.

I moved and rotate the mCollarLeft, the mElbowLeft and the mWristLef and some other legs'nodes and then I created a Bind Pose to use for rigging.

After lauching the "Smooth Bind Skin" command  I made some weights adjustments to almost every bones and, in Maya, it woks pretty good with each of the animations built in MayaStar. Moreover, starting from the T-Pose, the mesh deforms properly every time I do a rotation on any node.

But...

when I export it as DAE_FBX and import in Second Life I have an issue. It seems that those nodes I moved and rotated before rigging, go back to the original position and settings, making my avatar's shoulders crushing into the torso. Many deforming issues also on the arms and hands of the avatar.

How to do when rigging such a big mass avatars and when the skeleton needs to be adapted to the mesh shape before binding the skin?

I'm new to rigging and MayaStar as well, I would apprechiate so much a response rich in details and the simpliest english ever, as mine is too poor.

Thanks everyone for reading and helping, take care and have fun.

 

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

No idea about Maya or Mayastar for that matter....

but you do need to tick the "include joint positions" box in the uploader to use your custom skeleton.

Could be as simple as that.

[Daemon Sella]

Hi Kwakk and thanks for answering.

I did tick the "include joint positions" box in the uploader to use your custom skeleton.

It doesn't work the same.

Anyway I'm not using a "custom" skeleton. The skeleton is the one that comes up with MayaStar, the only one usable to rig avatars for Second Life.

I just did some adjustments to some mBones nodes to properly match the avatar shape form.

You know, without doing that I would have had the mWristLeft up to the middle of the forearm.

Anyway thanks for your support.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

By custom skeleton I meant custom joint positions within the standard skeleton

Not sure what you mean by "your" (my?) custom skeleton.  For now, all we can use is the standard skeleton, this will likely change when Bento hits the main grid/viewer.

A shame the tickbox is not the issue.

The only thing I can think of, is that you didn't lengthen the upper arms. It's been a while, but I think that's how you change the skeleton, not by moving the lower arm bones.

I'm sure someone else will come along, plenty of Maya users around (including the creator of Mayastar). Good luck!