Question: Best/Easiest Way to Split a Skinmesh?

[Legacy_The Amethyst Dragon]

               So, dummy me went and made a creature model today with three nice skinmeshes.  After hours of work, I went to compile it, and the thing has more than 17 bones on the main skinmesh.

So, all you gmax experts out there...what's the easiest/fastest/best way to split my skinmesh in two so that I can delete parts of each and reduce the number of bones in both parts (16 in one, 10 in the other).

For the curious, I've taken the CCP's displacer beast, made some minor adjustments (like glowing eyes), made a new texture, and covered the entire thing in a nice skinmesh.  Each tentacle will have it's own skinmesh, and the body has one (that needs splitting, because I didn't add up all the leg sections beforehand and 24 bones is just too darn many).

I do not want to have to manually repaint every stupid vertex weight again.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_ShadowM]

               I had that same problem with the nwn2 hell hound model, my suggestion is to split it where there the least amount of noticeable deformation of the skin or animation(maybe at the base of the tentacles they prob. using the majority of your bones). Is this the displacer beast that has like 2000 poly too? I think I reworked that down to 1000 without any quality lose, but I do not know where I put that file.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <chopping up...>

What I do, mostly from ignorance of alternatives, is to clone the skinmesh (complete with weighting on it) and trim off the unwanted verts (then remove those bones from the clone). Then I go back to the original and remove the verts/bones now covered by the clone.

But, like ShadowM says, I divide it at the most static ring I can find, such as around the rib cage. This lets the abdomen flex and doesn't interfere with the shoulders too much, though the join along the spine is noticeable ;-P

<...clones>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_The Amethyst Dragon]

               Thanks for the advice, folks.

I ended up duplicating the skinmesh and cutting near the pelvis (less flexing than near the 4-legged torso).  I did have to go though and redo weights for every stupid vertex on each part of the skin.

The original (1st/2nd Edition) CCP dark blue displacer beast, which I'm still using for an animation supermodel, was not very high poly.  I didn't use the 3rd Edition version, because I've always thought it looked like crap (both the NWN model and the illustration in the 3rd Edition Monster Manual it's based on).







For those wondering what I was up to and why...here's some rambling text for ya. :happy:

I built my skins by using the existing pieces, combining them into a 3 meshes (right tentacle, left tentacle, and body), removing hidden faces and vertices, then hitting them with the tesellate modifier (to smooth it out) followed by some minor vertex adjustments.  I used the lion texture while working, because it's much easier to work with lighter textures than darker ones while in gmax.

I cut my body texture in two after the fiasco with too many bones, then went through and painted weights for every single skin vertex.  Pain in the posterior, folks.  Especially since I'd already done it once before discovering the "too many bones" issue.

I ran the whole thing through CleanModels 3.5, then went back into gmax to replace the once-round glowing eyeballs that CleanModels turned into raisins.

Swapped in a brand new displacer beast texture (made from the higher resolution c_cat_lion.dds) for the lion texture, compiled my critter, and got him in-game.  The new smooth skinmesh isn't the easiest to see in-game unless you're close (it's mostly black and dark blue, rather than the old drab dark blue), but the slightly thicker tentacles and glowing eyes are noticeable from a distance.

If you'd like to see what the almost-finished model looked like in gmax (with the lion texture), you can see it here.  And...comparing the old version with the finished version.  Sure, much of the skinmesh smoothness isn't as visible, but I notice in-game, which is where it matters. '>

I had originally just thought to add glowing eyes, but after looking at the original model for a couple minutes, decided I had to give it a bit more of a makeover since I already had the model in gmax (skinmesh, new texture, thicker/rounder tentacles).
               
               

               

                     Modifié par The Amethyst Dragon, 23 octobre 2013 - 03:12 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_henesua]

               That as a good looking displacer beast you have there.