Revenant Maya Issues

[greebo]

I could make some progress today and it seems the Maya export process is working now (using Maya 2009):

 

 

The mesh is not weighted properly yet, as there are some issues to be resolved first. The skirt ended up black in game at first, because the vertices of the skirt's "inside" polys were at the same position as the ones of the "outside" polys, so I had to move those a bit inwards. The arms had a similar issue, and the mesh was open at some point. I could also save a number of vertices by merging them, the chain vertices were all unwelded. I also tried to fix a UV mapping issue at his toes.

 

Next up is closing the shadowmesh (has some visible gaps, see screenshot) and then weighting the mesh to the proper joints.

 

@Springheel: where can I find the head mesh for the revenant?

[Springheel]

@Springheel: where can I find the head mesh for the revenant?

 

Good question. I'll have to check how far I got with that. Worst case, I'll upload a non-weighted head. It won't animate, but you can at least position it.

[Springheel]

Ok, the head is up. "atdm:ai_head_revenant"

 

I haven't carefully scrutinized everything, but it seems pretty good on casual inspection.

[greebo]

Thanks, will try to check it out.

[greebo]

Back to the drawing board, I had to restart from scratch, as the geometry of the revenant had to be tweaked. I removed some stray polies from the shadowmesh and reshaped it such that it fits within the rendermodel. Due to different proportions, I also had to move a number of vertices (the shoulders and arms) upwards so that the revenant fits the proguard joint setup and re-weight the whole thing (again).

 

Now I'm running into some troubles when trying to rig the revenant's hand to the proguard skeleton. It's not fitting quite well, as visible in this screenie:

 

 

The revenant hand seems to be smaller than the one of the citywatch, for instance, and the hand bones are quite stretched. The animations work fine so far, but the hand doesn't look very good.

 

I'm not sure whether the revenant will work at all with the proguard skeleton, it's so much thinner and some things don't look good at all. The revenant is much thinner than the citywatch and its skirt mesh is distorted to the sides, and the back skirt is clipping very badly into the leg mesh. Plus the issue with the hands.

 

Any advice from squill or Noisycricket? Is it possible that the revenant mesh is "incompatible" with the proguard or is this just a matter of me finding a way to properly weight the geometry?

 

edit: Ok, finally I found the "Move Skinned Joints" tool, which was of great help, it looks better now. Let's see if this is enough.

[Springheel]

Back to the drawing board, I had to restart from scratch, as the geometry of the revenant had to be tweaked. I removed some stray polies from the shadowmesh and reshaped it such that it fits within the rendermodel. Due to different proportions, I also had to move a number of vertices (the shoulders and arms) upwards so that the revenant fits the proguard joint setup

 

Are you sure you've got the most recent file I uploaded? I didn't make everything line up perfectly, but I did make sure the model fit the skeleton proportions. The arms, if anything, were actually slightly *higher* than the proguard skeleton.

 

 

and re-weight the whole thing (again).

 

That btw, is why I can't bring myself to use Maya...one little change to the mesh and you have to start all over again.

 

I'm not sure whether the revenant will work at all with the proguard skeleton, it's so much thinner and some things don't look good at all. The revenant is much thinner than the citywatch and its skirt mesh is distorted to the sides, and the back skirt is clipping very badly into the leg mesh. Plus the issue with the hands.

 

You did pick a *very* difficult model to get your feet wet on. If you get too frustrated with it, you can always export an md5mesh of what you've got and I can look at the those difficult parts.

[greebo]

It's better now, I found out how to move those joints without having to re-weight stuff. Next up is painting the chains (easy), the shadowmesh (not too hard either) and then attaching the new head.

 

 

There are some smaller issues with his ass clipping through the skirt while walking, but I could remedy some of this by carefully painting the skirt and the legs.

[greebo]

There he is:

 

 

The chain and the shadowmesh are weighted, but I had to switch off selfshadows using textures/common/shadow2, the shadowmesh is too low-poly not to clip into the skirt mesh while walking. Next up is the def setup and arming the buddy.

[Tels]

There he is:

 

 

The chain and the shadowmesh are weighted, but I had to switch off selfshadows using textures/common/shadow2, the shadowmesh is too low-poly not to clip into the skirt mesh while walking. Next up is the def setup and arming the buddy.

 

Nice! Is he armed with a sword or a "bone"?

[greebo]

He's carrying a sword, but I think the replacement animation doesn't work yet.

[Springheel]

Looks good!

 

the shadowmesh is too low-poly not to clip into the skirt mesh while walking.

 

One option is just to make the skirt shadowcasting (which has the benefit of casting shadows onto the legs as well). The skirts are usually quite low poly to begin with, so you'd probably only have a difference of 100 polys or less, with a noticeable visual improvement.

[greebo]

You can check out for yourself whether it's necessary, the guy is in SVN already - and I'm sure there are other issues as well. It's my first rigged model after all.