#BonesPro and Mapping
36 messages in this thread
Hi all,
I recently got BonesPro, and was very excited to use it on several characters I
have already created. I figured that I could just attach the pieces together
run it through smooth.pxp and then bone. However, in the doc's I got to the
point that says you have to boolean your objects or else you will get
unpredictable results…. Well, that's fine but now I am going to loose all my
complex mapping coordinates. Does anyone have a work around, and how
unpredictable are those results???
Thanks,
Andrew Sinagra
Digital Art & Motion, Inc.
>>I just "GOT" bones pro<< What does "GOT" mean. "BG"
Headlines should have read "Andrew $inagra Wins Again!"
Good luck with bones, I know you're gonna love it (even with the
boolean requirements).
Lee
>>"Andrew $inagra Wins Again!"
I like the dollar sign there, maybe I should change my business cards…<g>
The raffle was something I couldn't pass up. I think BonesPro is an amazing
tool and I am glad that I was able to jump into such a great offer. Did Jeff
mention that I also won an Autodesk T-shirt. I really love the shirt!!! <g>
Talk to ya soon,
Andrew Sinagra
Digital Art & Motion, Inc.
Yeh,
Its a pain aint it? I was hoping that a program like meshpaint might be a
solution
to this problem …but no. Good luck.
Ian.
/exit
Andrew,
>> Well, that's fine but now I am going to loose all my complex mapping
coordinates. Does anyone have a work around, and how unpredictable are those
results??? <<
Once you have a one piece character versus seperate torso/limbs you are
basically boned, pardon the pun. I think each requires a different approach.
The one piece character would use one texture/bump map for the whole character.
Not difficult to do, but a different approach especially suitable for the new
meshpaint program.
martin , have you fould any problems with lenzfx with aura? with 2d faces ,
detaching elements , ???
sherwood
Sherwood,
>> martin , have you fould any problems with lenzfx with aura? with 2d faces ,
detaching elements , ??? <<
no sir. But then I don't think we've done anything quite like what you
describe.
Martin,
I agree that it is a completely different approach to modeling characters than
what I am used to. One of my concerns is that I have a character with
different reflection maps in different sections and I would like to try and
retain the maps and be able to use him with bones. I guess I could combine the
maps into one map but it will be tricky to get the correct placement.
Meshpaint really sounds like the way to.
Thanks,
Andrew Sinagra
Digital Art & Motion, Inc.
Andrew,
>> One of my concerns is that I have a character with different reflection maps
in different sections and I would like to try and retain the maps and be able
to use him with bones. <<
tricky. Maybe you could try a cubic reflection map. That would allow you to use
6 different images, although you might get seams in the reflection if you
weren't careful with your choices.
>> you might get seams in the reflection
That's one of the things that I'm worried about. More and more I am starting
to think I definitely need to get Meshpaint to work with whole meshes for
BonesPro. Do you know if there is a way to apply multiple maps to different
sections of a mesh in Meshpaint? That would solve a lot of my problems.
Thanks,
Andrew Sinagra
Digital Art & Motion, Inc.
Andrew,
>> Do you know if there is a way to apply multiple maps to different sections
of a mesh in Meshpaint? <<
not sure. I'm not familiar with it yet.
Martin,
Thanks anyway. Even if Meshpaint can't provide the multiple map assignments it
looks like a very powerful tool, and something I should get. It would
definitely solve a lot of headaches.
Thanks
Andrew Sinagra
Digital Art & Motion, Inc.
Andrew:
>>> Even if Meshpaint can't provide the multiple map assignments it looks like
a very powerful tool, and something I should get. It would definitely solve a
lot of headaches.<<<
I'll be waiting for your call Andrew! <BG>
Murph'
Hey Murph,
Good to hear from you… How are you doing? We've gotten really busy down
here so you may be hearing from me soon.
Talk to you soon,
Andrew Sinagra
Digital Art & Motion, Inc.
Andrew,
>> Even if Meshpaint can't provide the multiple map assignments it looks like a
very powerful tool, and something I should get. <<
I'm going to check out the demo of Meshpaint this week. It looks like something
that would be really good for characters once you get used to the new way of
doing things.
Martin,
I've played with the demo a bit and it seems to be very powerful. Without the
book it is kind of driving a car blindfolded, you know where everything is but
your not sure if your going in the right direction. I think I may have to just
suck it up and buy it very soon.
Andrew Sinagra
Digital Art & Motion, Inc.
Hi Martin,
saw some of your stuff in the Special Effects book. Nice!,
anyway, to run Meshpaint you need a 24 bit card right ? not a 16 bit video
card. How much should I expect for a pretty good video card with what 2 megs
video ram on board ? (or should it be a 4 meg minimum ??) thanks in advance for
the info.
Mark in Canada.
Mark,
>> saw some of your stuff in the Special Effects book. Nice! <<
thank you very much. I hope it has inspired people to use those techniques in
their own projects.
>> anyway, to run Meshpaint you need a 24 bit card right ? not a 16 bit video
card. <<
I'm not sure. I think you'd be better off with a 24-bit card. I only buy cards
that have 4mb VRAM now, but if you can't afford that, at least buy the 2mb VRAM
version of a card that can be field-upgraded to 4mb. If you use windows a lot
then 4mb is preferable, if you mostly use dos-based programs then 2mb is
probably fine.
How much should I expect for a pretty good video card with what 2 megs video
ram on board ? (or should it be a 4 meg minimum ??) thanks in advance for the
info.
Martin,
>> anyway, to run Meshpaint you need a 24 bit card right ? not a 16 bit video
card. <<
MeshPaint will run fine with a 16 bit card or greater. It is usually best to
run it from the Materials Editor as the 3D Editor seems to lose some features
when run in more than 256 colors.
Brent
Brent,
>> MeshPaint will run fine with a 16 bit card or greater. <<
thanks for chipping in here, Brent. I was hoping you or somebody else more
Meshpaint-savvy would.
Brent,
'Just wanted to let you know the demo of Meshpaint was a real hit with our
users group!
John
John,
Thanks! Give me a call next week, and we can try and get you something new for
the next one.
Brent
Hi again Martin,
ahh, right now I'm running a 16 bit card with 2 megs of video ram, and in
windows I find it a bit slow refreshing the actual images on the screen. hmm,
would it be correct to say that a 24 bit video card would also be faster than a
16 bit card ?
thanks very much
Mark in Montreal.
Mark,
>> hmm, would it be correct to say that a 24 bit video card would also be
faster than a 16 bit card ? <<
I'm not sure if that necessarily follows. 24-bit is more data than 16-bit.
However, just getting a faster card, like the Diamond Stealth 64 which I use
and enjoy, will help in all modes.
Hi Martin,
How much would the Diamond Stealth 64 be selling for ? is a 24 bit card ?
I've seen some pretty junkie cards here (24 bit) going for 169$ with 1 meg of
video ram, but something tells me they are garbage, also some sell for around
500$, anyway, if you could give me a ballpark figure, that would give me a good
idea of what to expect,
thanks very much, I appreciate it,
Mark Schneider, in Montreal.
I'm told that's on the list of things to be fixed, but the object would still
have to be composed of several elements. I'm hoping multiple mapping
assignments per object will be in r5 (face mapping for the bump, planer map for
the texture, spherical for shininess, etc, on a single object.)
>>(face mapping for the bump, planer map for the texture, spherical for
shininess, etc, on a single object.)
That would be great. I already have a number of uses for such a method.
Andrew Sinagra
Digital Art & Motion, Inc.
You might also experiment with linking objects to the bones once the mesh
is deformed and moving. In some instances this will cause objects
associated with the mesh to "track" correctly. This is not a fix for all
cases but I've had acceptable results. Sometimes this technique requires
dummy objects. Just experiment, experiment, experiment. Did Jeff happen
to mention our project?
Lee
>> linking objects to the bones
I need to try that. I have a guy wearing wrist guards and I need them to stay
on his arms while bones is deforming him. I'll see how that goes.
Jeff had mentioned something about it, but no real details.
Andrew Sinagra
Digital Art & Motion, Inc.
<< You might also experiment with linking objects to the bones once the mesh is
deformed and moving. In some instances this will cause objects associated with
the mesh to "track" correctly. >>
PMJI, but I've linked to bones as Lee mentioned a number of times, and it *can*
work well in certain cases. The "Car2.zip" flic (something like that) I u/l
recently shows an example of this: The severely deforming automobile's
headlights used a couple of spots for the anim, but of course the headlights
were part of the entire car object as required to use Bones. Linking to the
skeletonal structure allowed me to severely deform the car, yet maintain the
approximate position & orientation for the spotlights.
Actually, I'd like to see BonesPro incorporate a method whereby linked or
attached elements, lights, etc. could be transformed(deformed?) appropriately
with the implied surface they're attached/linked to. I've used higher-end s/w
that could accomplish this, although it used surfaces, not polygons.
FWIW,
BILL
Bill,
I am going to try linking to the bones today. Hopefully I will get the results
I need. There really isn't much room for the object to be off though. I agree
that being able to use BonesPro with attached objects would be a great help.
Andrew Sinagra
Digital Art & Motion, Inc.
If you want to smooth out your seams, you have to boolean, but if you don't
care about the seam, you can just attach your objects together without losing
your mapping coords.
the only work-around I can think of (and I haven't tried this, but it oughta
work), is to boolean, smooth, select faces, detach, map, and re-attach (but use
mapping/acquire first, before you boolean, so you can get it back with a
minimum of trouble. I have done this for other things, if I know I am going to
be losing my mapping coords at one point or another. I apply the same mapping
coordinates to a cast-off object, like a box, and hide it. When I need it
again, I unhide the box, acquire it's mapping coords, and re-apply to the
original object.)
>>boolean, smooth, select faces, detach, map, and re-attach
That was my plan but I don't want to rely on that if I might run into those
"unpredictable results". I think Meshpaint may be the way to go but I have to
look into it more.
Thanks for the advice,
Andrew Sinagra
Digital Art & Motion, Inc.
The faces-detach/reattach method would leave seems, because you can't smooth
across separate elements, and also the join might pull apart at some point in
the deformation. The only way I could do it was to:
1: Build a seamless, single object using booleans and smooth.
2. Break it up into pieces using <select_face_detach>.
3. Map these-now separate objects.
4. Use create object attach to put them back together.
5. Then TEDIOUSLY weld the seams back together—ONE VERTICE AT A TIME.
Doing it one vertice at a time for some reason will not destroy your
mapping coords.
Painful but it works.
This method courtesy of David Stinnett, He figured it out.
Tim Miller
BLUR Studio.
>>Painful but it works.
Painful is right. With the large amount of verticies that these object have,
and the amount of time that it would take I would be better starting from
scratch.
Too bad you can't do multiple vertex seam welds…
Andrew Sinagra
Digital Art & Motion, Inc.
Even if you start from scratch, there's no way, (that I know anyway) to do
it. I'm
sure this must be on the R5 fix list, I was amazed it didn't get fixed in R4,
cause
it really bites.