Adjusting Skinwrap Control Vertices

[TheTrueKaiser]

Hello, everyone!

So before I get to my question, let me give some context in what I am doing.

I have a character mesh with facial flexes that are defined through a Morpher. The character mesh does not have bones (or helpers, or dummies, or controllers, or anything of the like - the only ways to manipulate the face is either through the Morpher or by directly moving vertices).

I am trying to add a lip-ring to the character mesh, that will animate with the Morpher.

For clarification, CHAR represents the character mesh, and RING represents the ring mesh. With that being said...

I am trying to accomplish this goal by applying a Skinwrap to RING, and having it target CHAR. With RING's Skinwrap selected, I go to Control Vertices and I select exactly one vertex on the control object (CHAR) that is closest to where RING intersects with the bottom of the lip (EG where the lip-piercing goes through). Let us call this vertex PIERCE-POINT.

What I want to do is adjust Skinwrap in such a way that the Skinwrap on RING applies maximum weight to every vertex on RING to PIERCE-POINT, such that when a Morpher is applied to CHAR that moves PIERCE-POINT, the RING will move, in its entirety.

I have gotten close, but there are a few segments of RING that have their weight applied to other control vertices, and I have been unable to figure out how to relinquish their control over it.

Below is an image showing off what I mean. In the image, I have PIERCE-POINT as the only Control Vertex selected, and the red is representing the weight assigned to it. Obviously, there are segments of the ring that are not assigned, and this is the crux of my problem.

So my question is simply this: How do I assign an arbitrary weight in Skinwrap to an arbitrary Control Vertex? And more specifically, how do I assign the entirety of RING to PIERCE-POINT?

Also, for posterity's sake, this is 3dsMax 2011 64-bit, running on Windows 7 64-bit.

Thank you very much.

[Anonymous]

I wouldn`t do it that way. If you apply Turbosmooth/Meshsmooth to your CHAR mesh, the RING  will loose the connection anyway.

So what i did was to create a morph target for the RING for the state 'Mouth Open'. Then i wired the morph of the Char mesh 'Mouth Open' to the morph state of the RING 'Mouth Open'.

As an alternative you could use a bone-driven jaw. Then the solution would be to simple link the RING to the jaw bone.

Hope that makes sense.

[TheTrueKaiser]

I will never apply a MeshSmooth / TurboSmooth to CHAR. In fact, one of the parameters I am trying to operate in is that CHAR is fixed, and will never be manipulated again. This is very much an "after-the-fact" thing.

With that being said, when you mention creating morph targets for RING and then wiring it, I have two questions.

1.) Are you explicitly / manually creating the morph targets for RING? EG, are you explicitly moving the vertices to where it should be when the CHAR's 'Mouth Open' morph is applied? Because manual movement is something I am trying to avoid - I have other face-jewelry to apply and to other characters with slightly different face geometries. Manual moving would be prohibitively time-expensive, which is why I have gone to Skinwrap, to try and automate this process.

2.) What exactly do you meany by wiring the morphs, and how would I go about it? I use 3dsmax predominantly for Source engine modeling, and so there are huge swathes of tools that I never use.

Thank you for the reply, by the way.

[Anonymous]

Hmm, so if the topology of CHAR never changes you probably won`t need my approach.

But then you could also use an attachment constraint for the jewelery.

Select the piercing go to Main-Menue->Animation->Constraint->Attachment then select the face of the char.

Use 'Set Position' to place the piercing exactly where you want it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVT-ITmvFXI

[TheTrueKaiser]

That is working exactly how I need it to!

However, there is one minor problem: how do I adjust the depth (y)? I can use set-position, the A/B coords, and the 2d box with the black triangle in it to adjust the xz axes, but I can't figure out how to move the y.

The reason I ask is because the ring is sticking too far out, now.

What I would really like is the ability to position it arbitrarily with the Transform gizmo, but it seems to be locked.

Keep in mind I have never used constraints, dummies, helpers, or any of that functionality before. I know literally nothing about this aspect of 3dsmax. I have only ever used it for getting models into the Source engine.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Transform  is 'locked' because it`s now handled by the attachment constraint. Rotation however is still controlled by a different anim controller, so you can adjust it with the rotation gizmo.

For easier placement of the piercing you can do the following:

Create a dummy->Link the Ring to the Dummy(Using the Link-Tool or the Link-Constraint)->use Attachment constraint on Dummy to attach to CHAR.

Adjust position with 'Set Position' as before. Now the Ring is linked to the Dummy that is attached to CHAR.

And because the Ring transform/rotation is now still controlled by (Float)-Anim controllers you can freely place the ring

and it still follows the deformations of the CHAR.

So let`s recap:

Ring is linked to Dummy->Dummy is attached to CHAR.

Hope this helps.

[TheTrueKaiser]

Thank you SO much, friend!

That is exactly what I need!

You saved me a lot of trouble. I was beginning to fear I would have to manually build all of these flexes for all of the pieces. The piercing->dummy->character workflow is so much easier, though, and does precisely what I need it to do.

I would never have figured this out if it weren't for you. I cannot even put into words how thankful I truly am.