Painting weights, rigging in o2

[Dirty Harry 0]

hey folks, ive been working on some units in max.

What i've done is some minor and some not so minor changes to the bis soldier. Ive not edited the arms or head because i want to keep the UV and texture untouched for the custome face files.

The problem i have is not knowing where to go once its imported in o2.

thanks for any help.

[Synide 0]

"Painting Weights" - You can't paint the per vert weight values as such in O2PE. (It's not that sophisticated)

"Riggin in O2PE" - There is no 'rigging' functionality in O2PE.

Quote[/b] ]not so minor changes to the bis soldier....

As the animation system in ArmA is size specific if you deviate too much from the overall size & shape of the standard BIS characters AND you want to continue to use the BIS .rtm's with the character you may start to run into problems.

All that said... You can alter the 'weighting' for any given point or group of points in a LOD (they don't necessarily need to be verts) in O2PE by...

  1. selecting them...

  2. In the dialog listing for 'Named Selections' find a component that you know the point/vert belongs too and right-click on the named selection.

  3. In the 'context menu' that pops up there is a menu item at the bottom called 'Weights'.

  4. Upon selecting this menu item another small dialog will spring forth showing you the percentage (%) weighting for this selection of points/verts that is attributed to various 'named selections' - You can alter these accordingly.

The only other 'reliable' way's I know of to bring 'weighting' info over to a p3dm are...

  1. Use my lxo2p3dm.exe converter to go from a .lwo (lightwave) file format to a p3dm mlod.

  2. Write a Mel script to dump the model from Max to a text file in the 'Universal BI Studio Text file' format and then load this text file using the first release of Oxygen2PE beta. Which still had the 'Import' facility for this file type.

I did this method when playing around importing stuff to O2PE from Max earlier last year and is most definitely the 'best' method to transfer 'stuff' from Max to O2PE as you get ALL the topo, uv, normal, weighting, naming etc. info in perfect order. Beats .3ds.

As a side note if you are feeling ambitious you could create some new dialogs in O2PE for helping manipulate the 'weightings' & the mesh via the in-built O2PE scripting.

I personally would not recommend doing this unless you have a family member that works in the mental healthcare sector.

good luck.

[Gargantua 0]

nice tute Synide !

Quote[/b] ] 2. Write a Mel script to dump the model from Max to a text file

can you be more specific ?

Quote[/b] ]"Painting Weights" - You can't paint the per vert weight values as such in O2PE. (It's not that sophisticated)

then what 'N' brush (paint selection color) do ?

[Synide 0]

can you be more specific ?

- Get yourself a copy of the first O2PE release, open a character model, export to 'BI Studio format', open the exported file in a text editor. Deduce the layout of the file (it's very similar to .obj), write a Mel script to export your Max model to the prescribed layout, Import said file using O2PE import BI Studio file, repeat till you get it working/right.

I had a quick look around to see if I had that Mel script lying about but I must of deleted it at some stage, sorry. It was a long time ago now...

Quote[/b] ]then what 'N' brush (paint selection color) do ?

Oh yeah, very true... forgot all about that tool...

[Gargantua 0]

Quote[/b] ]- Get yourself a copy of the first O2PE release, open a character model, export to 'BI Studio format', open the exported file in a text editor. Deduce the layout of the file (it's very similar to .obj), write a Mel script to export your Max model to the prescribed layout, Import said file using O2PE import BI Studio file, repeat till you get it working/right.

is there any way to automate it someway ? i.e wright automated script for any model ?

[Dirty Harry 0]

Thanks for the replies folks.

I seem to be getting..somewhere with painting weights within o2 using "redifine and normalize".

Its important not to have any keyframes loaded.

If you want to test, load an .rtm after you have painted your weights

[Synide 0]

@Gargantua... Once you write the Mel script to export a BIS Studio file from Max for importation into O2PE then it'll work with any model. It's not a once-per-model kinda thing...

[Gargantua 0]

Quote[/b] ]I did this method when playing around importing stuff to O2PE from Max earlier last year

...I had a quick look around to see if I had that Mel script lying about but I must of deleted it at some stage, sorry. It was a long time ago now...

so no luck you can find it ? ( maybe some data recovery software can help ?