Animation bug

[Daelin]

Ok, I am using 3dsmax and I'm having this problem: I've been attempting to animate a damned elf woman. I have rigged her, but she isn't rigged very good, because when I connect hand to arm, and I move the arm, the hand follows it. But when I move the hand, it deataches from the arm. Why? I mean, shouldn't the hand normally stay together with the arm? They are separated meshes. And I know that they should work because I've seen warcraft models. Hope you can help me! Thank you!

~Daelin

 

[Ekoi]

*tee hee*

You shouldn't have them seperate meshes. It makes it harder.

Blizzard makes their models mostly 2-4 meshes. One for the main part, one for the colored parts, one for wepen, and another for corpes.

Just look at a blizzard model to see what I mean.

 

[DeadDogNoGoWoof]

used to have this problem alla time. after you parented the bash mesh to the armature and added the vertex groups, on the hand mesh do the same, and add the ring of verts on the top to the lower arm vertex group that the hand connects to.

if this is too hard to understand, ill take some pics and help you out.

 

[Daelin]

I still don't get it... maybe some pics will help. Sorry, but once I get this I can animate.

~Daelin

 

[DeadDogNoGoWoof]

gotta go right now. when i get back ill write up a short tut.

 

[Pike]

Daelin do the following things to make animations work with art tools. After the mesh is rigged up, use polygon select and detach places you want to move(pelvis, chest, head, etc.), also don't move them for now. Create bones in places which you need the pivot to move or rotate the detached meshes. Then link a mesh to the right bone(arm mesh to arm bone, DON'T link bones toe or it will not work).

Create 2 keyframes in frame 0 and 1 and in dope sheet call them whatever you like, but don't call them any of blizzard used animation names. Go to Utilities Tab, press More... button and choose Unit Property Editor. In the property editor expand Mesh Properties and tick Connected. Now any new animation created with keyframes after the 0-1 keyframes will make the model animated properly.

I was in a hurry, so if you need and more info or some errors show up just ask.

 

[DeadDogNoGoWoof]

here, we have my example armature.

as you've already done, parent the armature to the main body and create the vertex groups. but, in the lower arm bone's vertex gorup, LEAVE OUT the lowermost four vertices when assigning vertices.

then, parent the hand to the entire armature, not just the hand bone (as im pretty sure you dont have fingers on your model) because we will need the hand vertex group and the lower arm vertex group.

here, pay attention to the vertex group i've selected in the bottom left of the picture, and the only verts i've selected. do the same on your model.

here, again take notice the vertex group i've selected and the verts i've selected. only difference will be that your bone names will probably be inverted (im far too lazy and confuzzled by that), and that your hand will be lower poly :roll:

 

[Daelin]

Thank you! It works now!

~Daelin