Multi-Layer Character Bone Problem

M

Megalodon

New member
Okay... this is the first character I've had this problem with - and it's driving me crazy.

I've got the main body and skelegons in layer one; the head in layer two and the eyes in layers three and four. After converting skelegons (and parenting the head object in layer two to the head bone), I rotate the neck bone and the entire head - along with the chest skin (which is in the same layer as the head) which unfortunately rotates right along with it. I've tried weight maps, extra bones and nothing seems to want to keep the chest skin in place while the neck and head turn.

I CAN get it to work IF the head is in the same layer as the body and skelegons - no problem - everything works fine. But... I need to keep the head in a separate layer so I can bring it in to TAFA to animate and .mdd the info back out to the head in Layout.

I'm seriously hoping that I've got an Alzheimers minute here and am forgetting something really simple. The example attached should give you an idea as to what is happening. My other characters were fine - I had turtlnecks up to under the neck and concealed any potential problem. Though... until now... I didn't know I HAD a problem. ;)

ANY help would be MORE than greatly appreciated! :thumbsup:
 

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ericsmith

ericsmith

Meat Popsicle
Won't you get smoothing problems with rendering if the head is a seperate mesh? Also, it looks like your mesh is frozen. Is that done because of the TAFA workflow, or is that just the way the character was modeled?

I'm really surprised that TAFA wouldn't allow you to export data back to the morphs, rather than just .mdd data. It looks like you can export to motion mixer files, but I'm not sure if that would be the best solution or not.

Eric
 
M

Megalodon

New member
No smoothing problems. The head/neck is connected with the chest skin so it works fine. Now if the head/neck were in layer two and the chest skin in layer one... THEN I would defintely have smoothing problems.

Yes, TAFA CAN use Motion Mixer files rather than mdd files, but MM files apparently don't translate all of the data that TAFA exports. Things (I believe) like automatic split morphs. Otherwise I would probably opt for MM files since they are smaller.
 
ericsmith

ericsmith

Meat Popsicle
Ahh, I see. I saw the change in surface in the neck and just assumed...

It does make me wonder, however, what kind of workflow in TAFA would be applicable if your character was a single mesh, and couldn't be seperated so easily. The motion mixer route seems a bit convoluted in my opinion.

Eric
 
M

Megalodon

New member
Yeah, the separation between the neck and chest is just a texture. It's obvious in openGL. Rendered it's perfect.

TAFA generally CAN take in an entire figure and just hide what you don't need. I found it easier to use JUST the head. And... unfortunately my mesh is rather dense. Regardless... to use TAFA is my main concern - great piece of software! :thumbsup:
 
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