3ds Max 2015 Vertices won't move with Bones

[Anonymous]

Hey all!
I'm new to the forum, and pretty fresh to the 3ds scene (started about a month or two ago).

I'm having a little bit of a problem with skinning I'm hoping someone can help me with.
I applied a skin to all my objects simultaneously and added all bones to all of them for convenience.
The one I'm having a problem with is a head/bust/jaw that is all one object. I haven't changed any settings or anything, but no matter how I weight the vertices and to what bones, when I move the bones they're weighted to, nothing happens. Even when I move a parent bone, or the top bone, they stay in default position. I don't know enough about rigging yet to know what I need to try out or how to troubleshoot the problem, so I don't have a lot of ideas.
Anything will help!

Thanks for reading!

[Brock_Lafond]

Can you zip the scene and attach it?

[Anonymous]

Absolutely! Thank you for responding.

The scene is attached.

[Anonymous]

Ok just to make sure you are following the process:

1. Select an object and apply a skin modifier
2. In the skin modifier add bones (can be a bone or any object) Check the bones are aligned to the part of your model you want to move.
3. In the Edit envelopes section of your skin modifier check that the envelopes encompass the correct areas of the mesh you wish to deform
4. In the advanced Parameters you will see an always deform checkbox which is ticked and a reference frame of 0. THis means that it will check the state of the object and its bones at frame 0 and use this as a starting  position. This means if you are editing at frame 0 and expecting deformations it will not happen as you are actually telling the skin modifier to use this as your reference starting psoition.
5. To see any animation you must turn animate on, go to a frame OTHER than 0 and modify your bones to a new position. That should do it.

[Anonymous]

Just followed your directions to a T, and it didn't affect anything at all. Not sure what the problem is.

[BenBisares · Accepted solution]

Ok I see what's happening. Basically your "Editiable Mesh" modifier (which is underneath the Skin and therefore affecting it) has a selection of only 1 vertex. So basically the Skin modifier above will only affect that 1 vertex. You need to go ahead and exit the sub-object selection mode so that the Skin will work on all vertices.

[Anonymous]

It worked!! I always noticed vertices would stay red after switching between modifiers, but I thought it was just an annoying little bug, I never knew it affected anything. I didn't even notice this one. 

Thank you so much, man. I really appreciate you taking your time to help me. 

Have a good day! 

[BenBisares]

No problem, my pleasure. Just don't forget that modifiers are affected by anything that is underneath them. It's an easy problem to overlook.

[RobH2]

You saved me with this. I've spent an hour trying to figure out why my verts would not weight to a bone. It was killing me. I found, like you said, that my Edit Poly below my skin was ON with a selection of only a few verts. I know to look there but just didn't. Man, this saved me....Thanks. 

[BenBisares]

The only reason I was able to figure that one out so quickly is because the same thing happened to me a while back. Took forever for me to figure out what was going on! lol

[RobH2]

Yea, I know how you felt. It took me forever and I never could get it. I'm glad you posted. Thanks again. 

[Anonymous]

Thank you! I don't understand why Max does this, but your post just saved my rig.

[Anonymous]

Hello I'am having some of the same issues, I know this is and old post but I would like to know what Iam dong wrong so I might be able to stop this in future projects below I have my work file.

Thank you.

[RobH2]

Can  you explain a bit about what you are trying to do and what's not working so we know exactly what to try to help you with?

[BenBisares]

I took a look at your scene and it the same exact problem that I described in my solution.

Click on your Editable Poly modifier and you'll see it's set to the vertex sub object mode (those 3 dots you see to the right of the modifier are a visual indicator. Thing is you have no vertices selected so you're telling the Skin to affect nothing. You need to either exit the sub selection mode (click on the vertex button again) or stay in that mode and select all the vertices.

[Anonymous]

      Thank you for the fast response. I still seem to be having trouble. I clicked edit mesh I selected all vertices I then added my skin modifier and added bones and still nothing happened when I tried to move a bone. I even tried it with vertices selection off.  I went into edit envelopes too and I can see that the bones should be affecting the mesh with its color coordinates appearing on my mesh but I still moved it and just the skeleton moved.

Again thanks for the fast response and future hep if your able too

Thanks, Warren

[BenBisares]

From your screenshots I can see that you're still in the "Editable Poly" modifier before you went to move the skeleton. That's a problem because that means you will not see the effect of the Skin modifier. I made a video showing you what you need to do

http://autode.sk/2Bw9mPO

A couple of pointers

• I can see you stayed in the Sub-Selection vertex mode and selected all the vertices. That's ok but I suggest to completely exit the Sub-Selection mode like I did in my video to avoid any selection problems in the future
• Animate the skeleton doing a simple animation of the arms/legs bending before you skin like what I did in the video. When skinning all you need to do is scrub the timeline to test out your Skin settings instead of exiting the Skin modifier, selecting and moving a bone, then going back to the Skin to make more changes

[Anonymous]

Thanks!! My problem was that the "Edge" selection was on... it didnt work even

if I did not select any edge, so when you leave the editable poly you should always make sure

that nothing was selected (No Vertex, Edge, Border, Polygon or Element) after you make sure

nothing is selected go to motion and everything will work as expected. 

Edge selected this is why I have the problemNothing selected! Fixed the problem 🙂

by the way im using cat rig if this helps to someone.

THANKS 🙂

[Anonymous]

hello

please can anyone help me !!

i have a big problem with my model skin i don't know what is the problem exactly but when the bones animated move my model move too but not following the bones move i don't know why and where is the problem exactly to solve it and no poly or mesh selected !! please anyone can help !!

[felix.hecht]

OMG, thank you for repeating that your Edit Poly was ON. Mine too. 

You saved me a sleepless night, thank you so much 🙂