Copy weights function in o2

[abs 2]

Hey guys,

I've got a model that's similar to the us_soldier_captive p3d, and I figured that I would try to copy the weights over from one to the other using the Tools > Copy Weights... function. I can see o2 copying the weights, but I'm unsure of how to get it into my model (with the exact same selection names, btw).

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Abs

[Johannes 10]

lol noob

[abs 2]

fu for getting me excited for thinking someone actually had something legitimate to contribute.

Abs

[Synide 0]

I believe it was meant to be something like...

Have your model open say on 1.0 LOD.

Create a temporary empty new lod of type 'Edit' with a res of 1.0.

Start another instance of O2PE and open the us_soldier_captive.p3d.

Goto LOD 1.0, Select-All (Ctrl-A), Unhide (Ctrl-Shift-H), Copy (Ctrl-C).

Close this instance.

Swap back to your model.

Paste the 'copied' us_soldier_captive lod into the temporary Edit lod.

Goto your Lod 1.0 and select points that you want to copy weights too... ie. the destination points.

Run Tools>Copy Weights.

Select Edit 1.0 Lod and the appropriate selection to copy weights from... ie. the source selection.

But, personally I wouldn't bother with any of it... it's fickle and flakey... you'd be better of doing it by hand yourself with Edit>Edit Modes>Paint Vertices or editing the selection weights manually.

Preferably though you'd be better off painting the weights in another 3D app...

[abs 2]

Oh, you make it sound like I know what I'm doing when it comes to weighting. My knowledge on the topic can be summed up in one sentence:

It's used to tell the engine how much a selection weighs.

I don't even know if that's right. Either way, I wouldn't know what it's supposed to look like in order for me to paint it, so I suppose I'll just have to keep on entering them one by one.

By the way, is there a way to make the weight window larger?

Abs

[Synide 0]

Oh sorry, thought you knew what weights were for...

 Per-Vertex-Weighting is principally used in Real Virtuality Engine during animating mostly the soft-body models. ie. characters.

The process involves attenuating the transformation based on the 'weight' that other selections may influence the current selection that is being transformed.

Unfortunately you can't make that particular 'weights' dialog any bigger...

If you had the time & inclination you could write a O2PE script to produce the same information (and probably a little bit more) in a seperate dialog.

One of the problems with that (beta version) copy weights function is that weights are per-vertex... if the source selection has 400 verts and the destination selection has only 298 verts it makes it difficult for the O2PE programmer to decide which verts in the destination should get what values... it can be done, but as a programmer you gotta jump through a whole lot more hoops to get a resonable result...

Do you have other 3D apps at your disposal?

[abs 2]

I use 3DS max, but I wouldn't mind purchasing other packages if they save me time. What did you have in mind?

Abs

[Synide 0]

I use 3DS max, but I wouldn't mind purchasing other packages if they save me time. What did you have in mind?

Abs

Nah... Max covers all the bases... although I don't use it myself... guess it's the brain-muscle-memory thing - I find it's useability clunky.

You should be able to do all your weighting in Max and I think XSparky had a Max->O2 tutorial somewhere that showed how to retain the weightings during importation.

The issue with bringing a non-standard character into O2PE is bringing along the per-vert-weights... if you want a top result you really need a method of replicating the exact same geometry in your external tool over into O2PE coupled with the weightings... otherwise you have to much pissing about tweaking and tidying up in O2PE. Personally I hate do anything related to vert weights in O2PE... it's a chore.

As I'm not a Max user I haven't persued the effort to have a well defined movement of geometry between Max and O2.

Because I use Modo I spent the time to create a useable method of interaction between the two apps... So, I do map weighting etc. all in Modo and just convert it over to O2PE.

There are apparently lots of people involved with the ArmA community that do use Max and quite significantly too... I'm really surprised that someone hasn't gotten off there arse and written at least a Maxscript to export to .bistudio format... which that version of O2PE you are using can import.

And, which would be the flawless method of getting geom, uv, weight & sharps from Max->O2PE.

[MehMan 0]

Well I think the first problem occurs when you import the file into max, you've already lost all the weight, selections and everything. You have one single model and then you modify at will.