Modeler Trying to Start Simple with a Body Replacer : Fallout: New Vegas

» Fri Apr 08, 2011 8:28 am

btw, you can modify skinned meshes without redoing the skinning aspect, just dont delete or add vertices, you can move elements, vertices, polygons, etc without touching the skin modifier, very useful if you just want to make those boobs bigger or those thighs skinnier or want to add smoothing cause that seems to get lost on import sometimes, just click on the mesh in the modifier stack, select your sub level and work with it

This is exactly what I am attempting to do--modify a skinned mesh. The one I am working with appears to have a reasonably good working structure. I'm just trying to develop a process by which I can modify it without losing the working rig. I have seen some promising results now, so I feel I can make the process I am attempting work. It's just going to take a lot of careful testing.

In reference to making the mesh an editable poly--I have been able to do that, modify the mesh, and export into game, and it seems to keep the skin just fine. For now, I am going to try to avoid welding the verts, because that seems to cause me more headaches that I don't know any good solutions for. I'm going to see how far I can push things with the edges like they are. Later on, I might get more brave, but I am trying to just get a process that works for now.

Oh yeah, and my "starting simple" comment was meant as ironic. I realize I am taking on something rather complicated. It is part of my particular form of madness. A weapon would indeed be a much simpler place to start, but I am more interested in seeing what I can do with a body.

By the way, the Geck part of the process is turning out to be much simpler for me--I have already figured out how to make a new race, assign it its own body, and assign the race to particular characters as I prefer. Once I am able to produce a body mesh I like, the new race I am thinking of should be relatively easy to implement.

» Thu Apr 07, 2011 11:03 pm

well if i import a nif that has a skin modifier its always an editable mesh and you cant just turn it into a poly without loosing the skin modfier, but maybe i overlooked some import setting here

yes you can. I already decribed how to do so in this thread- add an edit poly under skin. rclick, collapse to.

@editable mesh
i had meshes where an editable poly vertex weld didnt weld all vertices but it did as an editable mesh, not sure why but its one of the reasons i wouldnt forget about editable meshes completely

user error

but really, there is an age old bug that happens in max, meswhsmooth/turbo smooth does something weird and bends the mesh slightly. the solution is to convert to mesh then back to poly. Pretty much the only time i have ever needed edit mesh.

@smoothing
the normal map doesnt define the smoothing of an object, if a mesh has a hard edge you need to split the smooth group there, no way aorund it and basicly all meshes have that at one point or another except maybe bodies, that applies to vanilla meshes too
normal maps can hide some of these errors but theyre more or less there to create structure and add groves, not to smooth stuff, if you have shading errors your mesh svcks
normals are not baked with smoothing groups anyway as most people nower days do that in zbrush or mudbox where you simply have millions of polies and dont need smoothing at all

No one in their right mind bakes in ZB. It doesn't raycast bake the same way. it's not taking into account vertex normals of the mesh properly. Nearly every dev workflow for games basically uses ZB to create the high poly, the bakes are done in max or perhaps maya. yep, fallout3, dragon age, all games on unreal engine, crysis. All i know for a fact baked their normals inside of max because ZB does not store normals the same way as 3d modelling apps that use polygon meshes.

another reason for this is because the tangent basis in zbrush does not match the engine.- you have to make sure the UV seams are orientated and aligned in the same direction in the UV, or else your normal maps will display a seam there when rendered in the engine. Having to align the shoulder seam of the arm uv shell and the body uv shell is a little unreasonable, but doable. the same high poly mesh, but using a baker like in max will not display such seams in the baked output, no matter how the UV shells are arranged.

A normal map certainly defines smoothing of mesh! it's not just for surface details!

and btw, nifs have smoothing groups too, tho i must admit i didnt find their setting in nifskope yet simply because i didnt bother, its not of use anyway if youd know how to modify em in nifskope..., if nifs didnt have smoothing groups how would the mesh suddenly have em if you import it in max?

thats not smoothing groups. smoothign groups is a phong shading lighting trick. what happens in a nif is different. Vertices in a nif can only have 1 normal vector. What happens in the nif is that it duplicates vertices, thus splitting the edge. so now you have 2 normals, which is how you get a hard edge. when you import them into max, without weld seams ticked on import, you will see all those perceived smoothing groups are actually open edges.