Skin Weight Problem (referenced Scene)

[mordin]

I am using Maya 6.01 (solely because this is the only version supported by the Battlefield 2 game editor.)

I have created a new model, and followed the tutorial to attach it to the 'official' rigs. The verts are influenced by only two joints (as stated in the tutorial). It all works fine, the problem is painting skin weights. I paint them, and save, but when I open the scene again the skin had gone a little crazy.

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c278/DWh...eddskincopy.gif

Could this be due to 'referencing'? I havent used referencing before, but it was part of the tutorial, so everything should be fine. I have even tried exporting skin weight maps, incase this helped, but it didnt change anything.

Its definately a skin weight problem, I can 'paint' it out, but everytime time I open the scene it looks like the image above.

Can anyone help?

[drblacksnake]

normalize weights in skin cluster.

[mordin]

I think I tried what you suggested (select the skin on the head, -skin-edit smooth skin-normalize).

The skin snaps back into place. I save the scene. I reopen the scene and it looks like the image above. I ve tried painting a value of 1 on the parts, save the scene, but when I re-open it looks like the image below.

Its like its not saving the skin weights properly.

Any other sugestions?

[bastardloud]

Nice,

I think that the problem your haveing is in the steps your takeing. From my exerperince you have to wieght the mesh before you reference it. When your open a file in maya it first opens up the file then it runs through and sees whats referenced after that if finds the reference and loads it up. So if everytime maya is reloading the reference from the file its referenceing I think it doesn't matter what changes you save in the file that has the ref. it it will keep reloading it's original state.

Why do you have to reference your Geo/mesh into the scene with the skeleton?

Why do you have 2 "root" groups and why is one an empty node?

Are your sure your not supposed to reference the skeleton/rig instead of the Geo/mesh?
This would make more sense considereing your not ever going to touch the rig your going to alter the mesh.

do you have a link to this tut?

-BlarGHHH!

[mordin]

It does work. Thanks for the help (though I would have thought I would have checked that).

-Referenced Mesh; I just followed the tutorial. I can see what you are saying though. I may try setting it up again, and attach a mesh after referencing.

-The root groups are probably part of the the naming convention the Game editor needs to indentify things. The naming was very important, if you get it wrong you cannot import it into the editor, the editor doesnt recognise it, and therefore cannot get it into game. (the underscores were important too.)

The tutorial is found here...

http://bfeditor.gotfrag.com/Creating\_a\_New\_Team.zip

personally I dont know if the guy who wrote it knew maya that well.

Kind of a pain in the ass to get it set up as you need Maya 6.0.1 (no other version works), cgfx shader, and an Nvidia card (as cgfx shader is only supported by Nvidia).
Oh, and Battlefield 2 and its editor, if you want to get it into game...

If anyone thinks there are mistakes on this tutorial (such as referencing the mesh) then can they let me know?

thanks again.

[bastardloud]

I think this is the answer to your problem.

1. Select File > Reference Editor.
2. In the Reference Editor , click the referenced file then select File > Save Reference Edits.