Mesh oddities

[JackRipper666]

Hello guys, I'm still trying to tackle some other issues with Mesh. One of them is when a mesh is uploaded and rigged, the bodyshapes tend to sretch and elongate characters out of Maya in weird ways. Example I use female bodyshapes for male characters because of this, problems I have is forearms are very elongated. I can only get them to shrink so much and it deforms the character too much from the original build of it in Maya therefore I use Female shapes because of this. I've played with blender and it does the same thing and seems as if skeleton position is part of the problem but it doesn't accurately take joint positions in world for some reason. Seems that I can't really move joints to change that moving them around the mesh or outside of the mesh will make changes but sometimes more of a mess then an actual fix to elongated limbs. So is there something I'm doing wrong? I put the skeleton in my mesh characters as aligned to the joint area's as possible, deforms good in Maya for the most part. But one issue I see is maybe body shapes are just overriding mesh characters too much. Is there a way to completely take off body shapes and scale the characters more to the original look from maya? Some where in the uploader maybe?

 

 

[Gaia Clary]

I am not sure if this applies, but one issue is that even when you use joints offsets, your mesh will be affected by your SL Avatar shape: All shape sliders which change bone lenghts get applied.

The main problem is to find the "neutral" SL shape. My experiments on that do not verify that the neutral shape is "Ruth". It looks a bit more complicated and i have not yet found a way to predict what SL shape is to be used for a specific mesh to keep it in the same proportions as it has in the character editor.

Here is a video that shows how to get a shape into SL. maybe that tutorial can give you some hints:

[JackRipper666]

Thanks Gaia this might help, trying to see how I might be able to use this to help get me to more of what I see in MAya is what I get in SL type of upload. How did you create a neutral body shape? Is that the same thing as just making a default body shape or no? Only offset I use is usually to get feet to ground which is z offset. I'm gonna try taking that off though cause that has to be something to it. Tends to give me different results as times. Example if I adjust joint positions in maya reupload and use same z offset as before I now have a different ground level to my character as well as elongated limbs but this time it will be more in the hands instead of forearms. But I'll try more with the upload options maybe something there can fix this. 

[Cathy Foil]

I use Maya 8.0 so your version may behave differently.  What it sounds like to me are you need to do two things.  One you may need to "Delete History" and "Freeze Transformations" of your mesh before doing a smooth skin bind.  Secondly sounds like you need to "Freeze Transformations" of your skeleton.  You can move the joints and rotate them to any position or length you like.  What freezing does is zero out the rotations of all the joints.

So my advice would be, since you already skinned your gorilla avatar mesh to the skeleton, is save the skin weights.  Then "Delete History" of the gorilla mesh which will automatically detach the skin and then do "Freeze Transformations".  Next select your skeleton and "Freeze Transformation" and not a bad idea to also delete its history.  After that do smooth bind the mesh to the skeleton and reload the skin weights you have already saved.  Now export your mesh and skeleton as normal.

When uploading to SL be sure to make sure you have upload joint positions and skin weights selected.

I hope that helps.

[JackRipper666]

Thanks Cathy! Actually what I ended up doing is using a reset skincluster python script from this site here. This guy really makes my life easier I suggest everyone use it if they like Maya lol!

http://www.macaronikazoo.com/?p=188 

 

For some reason importing and exporting weights always gives me undesired results in maya though. Usually weights get changed in certain area's or I lose coverage of weight on parts of the model and have to re work and smooth it. Not sure why this is happening but Maya can be a nightmare for me at times. Even lost work today with a crash on a new avatar I'm building! :matte-motes-evil: 

 

Oh well but what that tool does is allow me to just adjust the joints and bones without having to detach the skin weights. Example I can go in just move the collar bone in different area's, run the command in the python box and it will move the collar bone over for me allowing me to do just a small adjustment to the weights if I need to, but also helps move the skeleton around so when I upload it in world of SL it will move the shoulder and chest over if I feel it's not wide enough or how it looks in maya. 

Plus my eyes play tricks on me as the avatar is in T pose it might look good but until I get some movement on it in world I can't see my flaws in the mesh. So actually SL body shapes are quickly improving that for me without having to remodel it in Maya! I'd like to see all the categories in bodyshapes be adjustable for mesh if possible. I think that would be very beneficial  anyway thanks again for help!

[Cathy Foil]

You're welcome Jack!

Oh and thanks for the link to the joints tool!!!  It sounds awesome!

I can't wait to explore the site for more gems.