Resuming Blog Posts for Digital Animation Services

     Several years ago I migrated my website to Wix. Therefore my Blog migrated as well which explains the long lag in any posts here. Seemed like an OK idea at the time and the Wix platform has served me well to be sure. However, I'm finding their pricing a little hard to swallow as discount periods have ended and time goes on. I intend to migrate off of Wix in the next year when my contract expires and as such, my Blog there will need to migrate as well. Unfortunately, as many already know, Wix's web design platform and blog are proprietary (I knew this going in but for some reason didn't think much of it at the time) and therefore a migration to a new platform will be a bit time consuming. Good thing I have a year! I have therefore decided to resume posting here on Blogspot/Blogger for the forseeable future. Since I have a massive following of up to 3 or 4 people, I don't anticipate this being a problem for the internet.

If it was not clear, my website and blog were entirely rebuilt when I migrated and are always available at  their original home: www.digitalanimation.net

Thanks!

Dave 

3ds Max Skin Modifier Tips

 A couple quick tips for working with the Skin Modifier in 3ds Max:

I ran across a few issues I had trouble resolving without some help from others on the interwebs.

1. I wanted to select the vertices belonging to a particular bone as I worked through the skinning process on my mesh. Though it was posted in a few places online, I figured I'd add to that tiny list of places by posting it here. Credit to the original maxscript author whose name I did not find online at any of the places it was reposted.

Just run this snippet of maxscript code and it will select all the vertices associated with the selected bone in the Skin Modifer:

            s = modpanel.getCurrentObject()
            -- if the current modifier selected is a skin modifier, then select the vertices
            if iskindof s Skin do
            (
                skinOps.selectVerticesByBone s
             )

Though this capability is obviously included in the basic SkinOps properties in maxscript, I am not aware of any way to do this natively in the Max UI. 

-------------------------------------------------------------- 

2. I also wanted to attach one skinned mesh to another, effectively combining the 2 skinned meshes into one and therefore the 2 Skin Modifiers as well leaving a single mesh with a single Skin Modifier. This was to make my life a little easier when I imported the character into Unreal Engine. I wanted only one Skeletal Mesh to deal with in Unreal. Again, I found the solution in a few places online so thought I would repost here as well. Credit to user PolyHertz from the original forum post in 2015 which can be found here:

https://polycount.com/discussion/162400/attaching-separate-meshes-and-retain-skinning-data-help-3dsmax-but-open-to-other-software

 The process involves adding a Skin Wrap Modifier with the following steps:

    1. Duplicate the meshes in place (select them all then press ctrl+V).
    2. Combine them, and add a Skin Wrap modifier to the resulting mesh.
    3. In the Skin Wrap modifier add the already skinned meshes, and change settings as needed.
    4. Convert the Skin Wrap modifier to a regular Skin modifier.
    5. Delete old non-combined meshes.

Happy Skinning!