Uv mapping after animation (oops!)

[doms]

... how do you add uv sets and texture after you have skinned and animated your character? I've tried texture reference object and changing the inputs for uv mapping to go before skinning. Another option would be to export skin weight maps, do uv's and re-skin BUT i used lots of complex lattices to skin it.
The problem is that there's several weeks animation on the character (quick animation test of my 2 months of rigging!)
Don't you just love CG, 1 step forward, 2 steps back, cha, cha, cha!

[joojaa]

Well actualy you should have done that before this offcourse but you can do it like this (it is however just a way around not a good solution so do it properly next time):

also having tools for detaching laticces bindings etc is a boon fo any developper. and making them isnt hard so i suggest you do look into this.
copy the object dlete the copys history if any. uv map it. transfer the map to your new object. Make sure it pops last in history!

[doms]

WOW it works!! from now on i shall follow your advice and not make mistakes!
The problem is i'm being over ambitious for a first time char. animation project (over complicated/ rigged character) so all my mistakes seem to involve weeks/ months of messing around. K.I.S.S.
Thanx again

[joojaa]

Yes well i would have just detached the history and made some tweaks to the original and then reconnected. But it requires some rooting around, not so fun especialy if you dont have the mel codes around that can be used as templates. and its not allways so convinient whenin a hurry!

[doms]

funny you should mention disconnecting history as i was just about to do another post on the subject. In Max you can just turn stuff on/off/delete in the modifier stack, how do you do this in Maya history? changing the node state to blocking doesn't seem too useful. I know this is a really basic question but thats the problem with teaching yourself, you often miss out the fundimentals to get to the interesting stuff. Do you have any rough idea what percentage of maya users are self taught?

[joojaa]

delete the connections and then re connect uppon edit. works if certain criteria is fullfilled. Sometimes just reordering the stack should do fine just slect the object and list all connections with the arrow into box function on the status line. sometimes just replacing (or editting!) the intemediary object that is the base is enough!

[doms]

someone has just shown me how to view history as connections in the hypergraph. After 2 years of Maya! maybe i should go back to Max...

[joojaa]

yes well ita another thing to view them than actualy do anything to it! its not just there for fun youknow!

but the hypergraph is not the best way to reorder stuff in most cases. but it is for detaching. retaching and editting the origin.

[doms]

another way around this problem (i was using poly proxy) is to delete history from smooth mesh and reconnect to proxy as a wrap object. The copy/ paste uv's stuff is too complicated.

[joojaa]

yes even easier would have been to unhide the intermediary and modify the uvs on that.... works on very many bound things. But yeah offcourse thet would have been hard to decribe how to do bacause i have offcourse on idea of how your history looks like

but transfer is just the easy way for those not willing to dig into the stuff maya is made off.