Replace character skin to bone structure

[Anonymous]

Hi, 

Some time ago I made a link between Vissim and 3Ds max to animate a crowd simulation. After my client saw this she was very enthusiast. 

One question she had however was if it was possible to make some variation in the crowd. 

I tried to couple an other characters (skin modifier) to my already existing bone structure. Unfortunately without success. On the internet I can't find any tutorials.

Does anyone knows a way to do this (see Youtube screenrec)?

Thanks in advance,

Louis

[Alfred.DeFlaminis · Accepted solution]

Hello @Anonymous,

I'd like to help you with this or at least offer some guidance, but I'm not 100% sure what you want to achieve.  Do you want to change textures on the characters or add new characters to the mix?  You currently cannot add custom characters to Populate. This thread has an old link about replacing meshes but it can lead to corruption of your user settings.  

If you just want to change the textures/material on a person we can do that, or if you want to add your own characters totally outside of populate we can also do that with proper .bip's or .bvh animations.  Or... am I misunderstanding you here?  Thanks for any clarification. 

One option would be to pointcache one of the characters, but you won't be able to access the skeletons of the populate characters.  However a regular rigged biped and some animation files (many are free) should do it. Here is a link to some free .bips and scene files for this purpose.   

Best Regards,

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous,

I just wanted to follow up here, any progress on your issue?

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

Hi Alfred,

Thank you very much. I'm afraid I was thinking the wrong way. Replacing the texture could be a much easier solution (than replacing the whole character).

Today I hope to find some time to try this. I will let you know the result.

Regards Louis

[Anonymous]

Thanks Alfred! replacing the texture worked.

Sometimes a solution can be very simple.

Regards Louis

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous,

Great!  I'm glad it worked out and that movie looks good.  I'm very happy that you're in good shape and let me know if you need anything else!

Best Regards,