grrrr i want my big monitor back for my modeling machine >_< i'm SO pumped about modeling my own Bahamut now :P

yey, got good and bad news...

the bad... 3ds is making this really hard, basically the problem is that in-game it stretchs SO much and the vertices go to really ridiculous points becomes a colorfull web... still without even moving (yet on the root animation), but everything's hierarchy is just good to go and the weighting is also doing fine. I checked the xsi file on Mod Tools, and wille the mesh is still intact the nulls (some helpers and bones) aren't symetricaly placed around the mesh... my only guess is that 3ds is really uncapable of properly mirroring bones and IKs for exporting (spent pretty much the whole weekend checking a lot of tutorials tryng to correct this wild bone placing, made enough tests to be sure that the problem IS the placing of bones during the compilation), I may give one last attempt at doing a whole new skeleton (at least can import the weights), and if that doesn't work, than it will only continue when I manage to understand mod tools (till then... modelling tutorials for xsi ;P )
eh... of course, the good news... is that carcass compiles it fine (despite of having around maybe double the number of bones that of the humanoid skeleton), wich is great, and carcass also ignores the IK solvers (archor thing that makes animation easier) so it keeps the animations and discards the IKs (whatever, at least they dont get in the way), if it works, will probably look like this: (more amateur test animation ahead) (maybe better if I ever get the hang of xsi, (allways beleaved xsi is better for animation))...
(didn't know you could do this in forums xD)

:dropsjaw:That looks awesome! The animation for the wings looks really cool.

veeeery mechanic looking animation. when you walk, you don't just move your legs. you're litterally losing, and correcting your balance.

you lift your foot up, and drop all your weight onto it, which causes your spine to adjust, along with your arms, and head, and then straighten your leg to bring back your full hight.

i know you've done well so far, but you have a very very long way to go yet.

oh, and my last piece of advice would be to work on actual looping animations. like just walking, just flapping wings, just standing idle etc. once you can get those looking natural, then work on complex combinations.

yes, of course, eventually...
it's just that after finally finishing the textures, weighting and burning a few braincells tryng to figure where and how each IK solver would work, came to conclusion that the whole skeleton is useless, cuz it won't work properly out of 3ds, don't know what I did wrong in it (carcass even compiles it, just looks like a bunch of trashed polies in-game), guess the only option left would be remove IKs, bones and helpers and try again on Mod tools WHEN I figure out how to do it... =.=http://img358.imageshack.us/img358/8...hamutx2zc0.jpg

skeleton looks fine to me, could just be that jka won't handle it. some games have bone limits, but jka has more in the face alone than that entire skeleton (lolz).

PM me and give me your MSN. I'll do what I can to help you get the hang of the program. Just import your root.xsi into the program and you should have everything all set, including weights. Mod Tool 6 is a little buggy with JKA, but I've been able to compile without issue lately, as long as I'm not dragging something from Mod Tool 4.2 into it. But Mod Tool 6 is a LOT more user friendly than 4.2, and allows you to use GATOR to take the animations from one model and transfer them to another with a few clicks, which is pretty sick.

Not sure what to do about the skelly though, as once you import it into mod tool as is, you'll likely just get a bunch of nulls. The skeleton will likely work properly though, as for the longest time I was using a null skeleton to weigh everything that came my way, up until about 8 months ago. In fact, if you load the .xsi animation files on filefront, you'll get a bunch of nulls there too.

Here's a good link for creating a rig, as well as some basics of weighing in XSI:
Rigging your Custom Character - Valve Developer Community

Hope all this helps! I'll try to get some info on creating bones out of nulls as well.


EDIT: Quick Tutorial on making bones in XSI:

http://www.computerarts.co.uk/__data...etstarted3.pdf

Ok... I intend to try modtools soon or latter but my priority right now is finishing these models (Laguna and Bahamut), rushing into Mod Tools NOW can be a really exaggerated option for something that might have a faster easier solution.
So facts:
- Model is correctly weighted, previows animation show that.
- Hierarchy is correctly set (previows screeshot also), plus Carcass compiles.
- Carcass compiles both glm and gla files, you can even see the model without distortions in-game if the whole mesh is weighted to pelvis.
- by greatly reducing the number of bones and weighting diferent portions of the mesh, I'm sure of one thing, the ONLY bone that remains in it's correct place is skeleton's direct child, pelvis, everything else is tossed around (wich causes the monstruous vertice stretching)
- animations are also exported into a gla file, but since the bones are messed up, all you see is a bunch of stretched planes... stretching more...
- Carcass actually shows one error message, that it could not creat the animation.cfg file (tho I don't think its that important since I probably would need to manually write it, plus by that the time this message shows both glm and gla files were already compiled), I assume that's due to the fact that max 7 doesn't divide animations as in layers nor give them some sort of label.
- huge ammount of bones doesn't seem to be a matter since I tryed compiling it with a lesser bone count (half that of humanoid) and the stretching was similar.

from my perpective it seens to concern bones' orientation since all bones except the pelvis are missplaced (not just their direction, some bones actually go way beyond the original height & width)
Wish I wouldn't post this, cuz it's just too ridiculous/pathetic to be seen by anyone, but I ain't getting anywhere either... ImageShack - Hosting :: bahamutxfx4.jpg

SO, before giving up on game modelling on 3ds and start a long process of learning xsi modelling/weighting/animating ... any suggestions to fix this? (not sure if skip modelling is a good idea (haven't made the best choices lately ;P ))

have you tried using the same naming method as raven did? like using real bone names.

for things like the wing, i would do something like "r_clavical_02" and "r_clavical_03". it could just be something as silly as the game not recognising improperly named bones? i remember that even some mesh parts like capes and stuff occasionally (randomly in fact) won't work if they are named wrong =/

I've experienced problems when i named the bones like the game ones, for example, giving the raptor thoracic bone the name thoracic(like the game skelletons) made it look like the model you've posted, so i just changed the name to "thor" and voila, it worked. Anyway I don't know why it happens and I animate my models in a very basic way (I don't even use IK and helpers), well I hope it helps something, and pretty good job on the model ;)

Edit:
and if it helps this is the skelleton of my dragon