avatar rigging question

[Ronald Greybeard]

if i have a mesh avatar i want to rig but the arms are facing down do i have to move the skeleton into the same shape as the avatar before i rig it?

[Ashasekayi Ra]

Which software package are you using?

[Ronald Greybeard]

blander but i also have 3ds max and milkshape 3d

[Ashasekayi Ra]

First, I will say that it will be a hassle since the SL uploader doesn't respect bone rotations at the moment, So, if you can, you may want to model with a T-pose instead of an A-pose. That being said here is a workflow:

- Rotate the arms of the armature down in Pose mode to fit model.

- Select all the bones. Go to Pose -> Apply -> Apply as Rest Pose.

- Do your parenting and weight painting.

- Once you are done, go back to Pose mode in the armature. Rotate the arms back to their T-pose defaults.

- Apply the armature modifer on the model.

- Select all the bones in the armature in Pose mode. Go to Pose -> Apply -> Apply as Rest Pose.

- Reparent the item to the armature with "empty groups" since the weights are still there.

-  Tweak weights if needed, adjust geometry etc.

 

[Ronald Greybeard]

thanks for that i will try when i get the chance, also i have another question, i made a mesh dress and added more verts to it and left the default weight paint on there after rigging but the weight paint didnt work correctly, so i removed the problem areas and repainted it by hand but if i try to upload it i get a dae parsing error, is there anyway to figure out why its doing that?

 

i took a look at the log file and it showed nothing so im at a loss

[Ashasekayi Ra]

I add vertices all the time without disturbing the weight painting. However, if you are having a problem that you didn't have before, you could just delete the weights from the problemtatic section. Then, manually repaint them. I can only assume the error was caused by leaving out a required vertex group or some problem with the geometry/material ids that already existed. A bad paint job rarely raises an error in the SL uploader. The most that usually happens is ugly spikes and distortion when vertices aren't painted correctly. I'd really need more detailed information about your workflow to really have an idea what is going on with your file.

[Ronald Greybeard]

It's not the extra vertices that are causing it its me editing the weight paint for some reason, if I leave the weight paint alone it will upload but if I delete the weight and do it myself it wont upload giving me the dae parsing error

[Ronald Greybeard]

i also found this in the log file after getting a dae parsing error

2011-11-03T14:18:15Z INFO: LLModelLoader::doLoadModel: Collada Importer Version: 1.4.1
2011-11-03T14:18:15Z INFO: LLModelLoader::doLoadModel: Dae version 1.4.0
2011-11-03T14:18:15Z INFO: LLModelPreview::verifyCount: Error: (expected/got)16512/16360verts

[Gaia Clary]

it sounds very much like your weight painting does not weight ALL vertices of your object. I think that is exactly what the log tells. So you may need to check where these unweighted vertices are. Here is a method how to locate them:

http://blog.machinimatrix.org/spikes-after-mesh-upload-to-sl/

After you found them, all you need to do is add the lost vertices to the correct weight groups. You may need to weight them also.

[Ronald Greybeard]

downloaded it, installed it, saw the new changes, exported and said export sucessfull

[Ashasekayi Ra]

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Ronald Greybeard wrote:

i also found this in the log file after getting a dae parsing error

2011-11-03T14:18:15Z INFO: LLModelLoader::doLoadModel: Collada Importer Version: 1.4.1

2011-11-03T14:18:15Z INFO: LLModelLoader::doLoadModel: Dae version 1.4.0

2011-11-03T14:18:15Z INFO: LLModelPreview::verifyCount: Error: (expected/got)16512/16360verts

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Ah this error  (expected/got) was brought up in another thread recently. Gaia's solution must be the answer to that problem as well. So, it seems to list how many vertices are in the object and then lists how many vertices have weights assigned to them.