Nytro Stovall

Alright, so after reading the wiki and this forum, as well as youtube and google, I've got several different versions of exporters and importers, converters and plugins, and it's getting hectic and annoying. Using Maya 2011 Hotfix 3, i have theFBX 2012 plugin as well as openCollada, and the DAE_FBX plugin. It appears that I can export files made in Maya as FBX just fine and re-open them just fine. I cannot, however, export them as .DAE and get them re-open successfully. If I try to open any .DAE file, it gives an error "Error reading file." If I try using the standalone converter from autodesk, I can convert the .DAE (i downloaded the simplebot.dae from the wiki to test it) into an FBX, but when i open the FBX, there are no joints or other data other than the mesh itself, as one combined polygon object. Any clear instructions and links would be greatly appreciated. Is the difference between the 2012 FBX plugin and the 2011.3 that much of a deal that I wouldnt be able to open DAE at all? but I can export them just fine. I'm an expert in Maya, but not with these things.(file types, SL, conversion)

The component editor is empty if you have nothing selected. What you want to do is right click-hold the mesh object, release on "Vertices". now drag-select a box over the vertices of the head. The vertices should come up in a top-to-bottom list in the Component Editor. You should be able to then click the "smooth skins" tab at the top of the editor, as it should already be bound. Now you can find the tiles at the top that say "mEye, rEye, etc" (or whatever the names of the joints are that you want to zero out). Now left-click the top most value box (usualy something like vtx[0]) then scroll all the way down the column and shift-left click the last one in the same column, hit "0" and then enter, so set the values of all those vertices for that joint to zero. Now they are bound to the skeleton but carry no weights. Also, interactive isn't a "bind", it is simply a weighting method, its not a binding method. Smooth bind and rigid bind are binding methods. interactive, post, and classic are weighting methods. I'm not sure what you mean by "child meshes", but I think you mean other meshes following the same skin? In that case, just smooth bind and use the transfer weights option.