Why oh why is my rig scrambled?

[Nacy Nightfire]

I've have no problems rigging in the past, but  I took about a month break to work on static meshes and then this week i made a boot base and tried to rig it.  It's been a nightmare.  Blender 2.49b was a complete failure. I could never get the uploader to recognize the bones. I've tried a million different things.

Today I loaded the avatar workbench into Blender 2.59 and I was FINALLY able to select the skin weights and joints when I uploaded my rigged mesh, but I get the results below.  I tried different versions of Blender 2.59 and I've tried a gazillion other things.  Anyone have an idea what's going on?  BTW I'm using ,Second Life 3.2.1 (243698) Oct 21 2011 15:51:50 (Project Viewer - Mesh) and Second Life 3.2.2 (244666) Nov  8 2011 17:07:43 (Second Life Beta Viewer)

[Braydon Randt]

A question Nacy, 

Did you copy bone weights ? and also did you accidently include the bones in your upload ?

 

Bray

[Nacy Nightfire]

Yes I copied bone weights and I purposely included the bones. If I omit the bones the option for checking off skin weights and joints are greyed out. Am I forgetting something or was there a major change in how to upload attachements that I missed?

[Braydon Randt]

I still suspect it may be because of the bones being imported with it.

There is a great tutorial on you tube by Ashasekayi Ra on rigging clothes for SL,  so i wont cover the basics,  but i dont believe that copying the bones into the upload will be bennifitial but copying bone weights will.

Rigging is very smoke and mirrors but there are a few lessons to learn with it,  and im still getting to grips with the tripfalls.

Bray

[Nacy Nightfire]

Thanks for your help Bray.  I had quite a lot of success in the past with uploading resized meshes as well as standard mesh clothing attachments.  Something's changed and I can't figure it out.  Now I've remade a test mesh I get all the right upload options, following the method I always used and the proper upload options are now available,  the image is wearing the item properly, the blue bones outline is now set straight, but when I upload the mesh and attempt to wear it, it doesn't attach as a rigged mesh.

If you are just getting a grip on it, take a lesson from me, don't take a month off!!

[Braydon Randt]

I had a similar,  

When i rezzed the item ...  it was fine,  when i wore it it went to crap. That was cause by the weights being applied at different times.  so I am pretty certain your weighting is still slightly broken. I do know what you mean though.  I started mesh a while ago to try it ..  and completly forgot how to do sculpties.  I modelled a mesh head and carried on building as normal in game,  then went back to mesh and i couldnt remember anything. So I feel for you Nacy

 

Bray

[Ashasekayi Ra]

Hi Nacy,

Blender 2.59: Don't check "Include Joints" when using a model exported from this version. The mesh will be scrambled. You have to use Blender 2.49 if you need to use joint offsets.

Blender 2.49: I've noticed recently that I get a dae parsing error in SL if I have "Apply Modifiers" checked in the Blender 2.49 dae exporter. I'm not sure if this is your problem though.

As a general note, you don't need to click "Include Joints" if you aren't using joint offsets. If you aren't using joint offsets, you don't need to include the armature with the export.

 

Another thing to check:

Make sure that all your LODs have the same amount of material ids. They should have the same names and the same order as the high LOD. This isn't related to the scrambled mesh. But, this can cause the calculate button to grey out.

[Nacy Nightfire]

Asha to the rescue once again!  Yaaay!! And thank you so much for your kind reply. 

I will check and try out all those things and hopefully I will soon post a pic of my avatar's  head pointing up her feet  firmly planted in the ground with her eyeballs inside her head (and wearing my mesh wellies, too, off course!)

 

[Ashasekayi Ra]

Post a pic if you get it sorted ^^ I loved your cat AV. 

[Nacy Nightfire]

Thanks Asha! .  I'll post a pic as soon as I can.  I've exhausted myself in Blender today  getting over my head with materials and the node system, so I have to put the mesh rigging until tomorrow.  (It's embarrassing to have rigged that cat and both a  tiny and gigantic sized avie, only to be back here pleading for help like I've never rigged a mesh  before)

[Ashasekayi Ra]

Oh, don't feel that way. I mean I think it can be confusing for us all because things keep changing with the uploader from one moment to the next. Not to mention, there are differences between bugs fixed in the project mesh viewer versus the main viewer.

[Nacy Nightfire]

 

Yaaay!  I tend to"flail" very unscientifically when I'm frustrated, I'm not certain what exactly worked here.  Because Blender 2.6 is my default Blender version, I may have been opening and saving and reimporting back and forth and corrupting the file as I went.  I was finally clear headed enough to really pay attention and import the boots obj version into 2.49b. 

I also took a tip from another thread where Gaia recommended clearing rotation in obj mode.  I think that might have made a difference because of the way I imported them as objs. I'm not exactly sure since I'm usually pretty good about applying CTL A rotaton/scale before I export everything.  And originally I made the boots in blender so it woudn't have been rotated.  But possibly I accidently scaled the model in obj mode.

A third problem which was frustrating me was may not being accustomed to the new uploader.  I kept thinking the DISPLAY option to see joints was the indicator to include them.  I forgot there was a third tab I needed to visit to assign the skin weights.

I'm extremely happy now!  And now to actually get to work on finishing the boots.  Yaaay!  Thanks a gazillion Asha!!!

[Ashasekayi Ra]

Yay! I'm glad that you got it working. I must admit that I have been tricked by the skin weights display checkbox too. Now, I always triple check that I actually clicked the "Include Skin Weights" checkbox.