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3 Dimensional Chat / 3ds Max .X export with Turbosmooth ontop of Skin?

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mrhdevil
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Posted: 10th Sep 2007 13:31
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Hi. I'm having a bit of a problem and was wondering if there might be an easy solution.
I have a character mesh all ready to go with bones and animation, exporting to .x using the pandasoft .x exporter works fine but it seems no matter what I do it doesn't export with the turbosmooth iteration setting. Turbosmooth is at the top of my modifier stack, next Skin then lastly Editable Poly.
Strange thing is when I remove Skin the 'Turbosmoothed' mesh exports just fine, but no animation ofcourse!
I know I could just collapse the whole thing and skin the newly iterated mesh again..hehe..but I would really prefer not to have to do that.
Can anyone help?
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HeavyAmp
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Posted: 11th Sep 2007 03:56
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Just Save it in another Max file then collapse it. So you can have one collapsed file for exporting then the other non-collapsed model you can continue to modify the character in.

Better to be dead, than to live your life afraid.
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mrhdevil
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Posted: 11th Sep 2007 07:14
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Hey there HvyAmp.
Unfortunately that would leave me with one max file that I could export with Turbosmooth but no Bone animation(e.g. running), and another that can be exported with the animation but no Turbosmooth.
I need both Turbosmooth and Skin in the modifier stack in order to get an animated and smoothed model, however it is a model that will not export to .x Turbosmoothed.
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Redmotion
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Posted: 11th Sep 2007 16:40
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What is Turbosmooth? Exactly? Is it a subdivision operator?

What is Skin? Does it control how the mesh is deformed (like muscles) or is it just the operator that links the mesh to the skeleton?

You can't export 3d stack operators to direct x format in any 3d program. The main reason is that in the 3d app they process the mesh at each frame of the animation and this is something that game engines dont do. Yet.

You should have collapsed the stack before you started animating. Can you not save the animation. Collapse the turbosmooth op and then add in the animation again?

Check out The Grand Machines! & Black Mesa: Source
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mrhdevil
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Posted: 11th Sep 2007 17:21
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Is there a way to "transfer" the biped animation to a mesh animation? Meaning to say that the mesh no longer depends on the movement of the bones?


Turbosmooth basically turns 1 polygon into 4, a subdivision operator as you said.

Sorry I'm self taught and still got a lot to learn.

Skin is a modifier that links the mesh to the skeleton, once again as you said. It dictates how much a particular vertex is affected by a particular bone.

I'm not sure how it all works but I hadn't collapsed anything and it exports to .x the same way it appears in Max, but it only seems to adopt the attributes of one modifier. For example, If I only have the Turbosmooth modifier applied without Skin, the exported model is smoothed(more polygons) but without animation because the bones aren't affecting the mesh, and vice versa.
However if both Turbosmooth and Skin are applied, the export only animated and not smoothed.
It's quite frustrating that one seems to be able to export the attributes of modifiers, just not both of them at the same time.
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QuothTheRaven
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Posted: 11th Sep 2007 20:02
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I don't think turbosmooth exports properly from max, you need to collapse it or use meshsmooth, although I think I recall having meshsmooth export issues too.

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Manic
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Posted: 11th Sep 2007 23:42
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ok, here's the reasons why what you're doing will never work;

1. Skin has to be the last modifier applied to export properly
2. Panda export has problems with the skin modifier anyway, use either kW export (max 8 only) or the physique modifier instead
3. any exporter will only work on the base model's geometry.
4. You shouldn't be exporting smoothed models for use with realtime graphics, in low poly modelling, you should have placed every vert and poly by yourself.

Here's what you can do to fix this,
collapse the turbosmooth modifer onto the editable poly object, or use the inbuilt smoothing controls on the editable poly object.

I don't have a sig, live with it.
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mrhdevil
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Posted: 12th Sep 2007 00:47
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Thanks for your time guys, from someone who clearly needs more knowledge and experience.
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Redmotion
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Posted: 12th Sep 2007 14:47
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You know, you could have used the new version of the XSI Mod Tool to save out the animation to an action and then reapply it to the mesh, once you'd frozen a subdivision operator onto it (using meshsmooth like quoth said). Take a look at the GATOR feature video at Softimage's website.

(XSIs also had modelling tools since around v5 that 3dsmax has only just had added in version 2008.)

Check out The Grand Machines! & Black Mesa: Source
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