hehe, in Korea you have to promise to marry them before they'll let you touch them (most of the time). That must have been a hard four years.

I could go through and put bones in the dress. However, that would take 50 bones, all of which I'd have to map to the dress. Lightwave is a pain for animation because you have to make and map the bones in a separate program from the one you model in, and you can't send the bones back for alterations later withoutb screwing up their heirachy. Also, I don't think vertice animation is posible in Lightwave, since you can't edit the polygons or points in Layout.

Anyway, you should give modeling ago. It's fun -until you get to rigging and weight maping and have to try to figure out how to export the thing to MDx format .-

Enough wining, back to the grind...

Why dont you try endomorphs? (Lightwave manual 28.42)

Well, I've basically finished the model and most of the animation (still need a wait sequence).

However, there are several problems that I don't think I'm going to be able to overcome by the end of the weekend:

1) The model is around the wrong way -yes, I've just realized that the model with all its animations on is pointing down the -z.

2) I can't get the animated model into Game Studio. Someone suggested loading the first frame as .x and then using append verts to get the model into MED. Actually, this is not working. Even if it did work, this way would be hugely labour intensive (To export the appended frame from Lightwave I have to put each one through Milkshape first because Lightwaves .3ds export doesn't work). Someone also suggested the lw2md2 plugin for Lightwave -this also doesn't work. I also tried a Lightwave to .x export plugin that supposedly can animations, keyframes \, the whole works -but MED doesn't like it, and only takes one frame.

So, even if I got through and turn every frame of animation around so that it is facing the right direction, I'm still left with not being able to get it into Game Studio. Plus, it seems that there is absolutely no automated possibility for getting an animated model from Lightwave to 3dgs.

I'm going to work on getting the animation around the right way and adding the wait animation, but if I can't find a way to export it by early Sunday, the model will have to be withdrawn from the competition.

@1): No Problem! You can do it easily in MED, after exporting it from Lightwave.

@2):

Quote:

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Someone suggested loading the first frame as .x and then using append verts to get the model into MED.

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You mean: frames (not verts), right?

Quote:

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I also tried a Lightwave to .x export plugin that supposedly can animations, keyframes \, the whole works -but MED doesn't like it, and only takes one frame.

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Which Version of MED do you use? It is possible that one version doesn't take it while an other, may be an earlier version, does it. I have all versions since A4. Version 4.78 MED already supports opening .x files.

If you have the last version of MED, you could give it a try and could make the bones animation in there. Me myself, I was impressed how easy and fast it is.

In short:

First to see all the buttons that you need choose full monitor mode (not window mode).
If you have one frame of your model in MED, you can start:
Change to bone mode (upside), choose 'create bone' button (downside), place the bones in the front view, first parent, then children, grandchildren... If you need to different strings of boneschange into a different mode and choose again 'create bone'mode. With merge bone mode you can ...what ...okey.

Connecting the vertices with bones choose 'Apply Vertices Mode', I started with the children and then step by step the hierarchy up, I don't know, if this is nessecary. Mark the bone and mark the belonging vertices - nothing more - if I remember well!
You can adjust the places of the bones simply with the move tool. Click 'animate' and unclick 'fixed bone size'.
For animating click 'fixed bone size', Edit --> Add frame...
Every frame has the same time difference to the neighbour frame.
For walk or run animation add four frames, you can add frames inbetween later, every time you add a frame you are asked what frame you want to be copied into the add frame, if you choose wisely you can get done your work easier and faster.

You can animate with the move and turn tool. Don't forget to click the 'options' button at the upside to see the choosed range of frames to be shure that you only work on one frame at a time.

Did you try LithUnwrap for converting? Can't find it on my PC and I only remember how to export a skinmapping from it to MED.

Does exporting the skin to MED work?

Cheers mate. Thanks for the heads up. Ultimate unwrap does actually take the .x file (so long as it it saved as text), though you have to be carefull to weight map every single vertice correctly or it will animate funny. A bit more messing around (actually a lot more, in Lightwave it means I have to set the bone hierachy again ). Anyway, thanks!

Okay, got her animated. Haven't had time to put any pics up yet, but I've finished. I've got to sleep. I'll post screens tomorrow and upload the model to Myrlyn's server.

Shame about the dress, but I ran out of time to fiddle around finding ways of animating it. Anyway, she does look a bit like the picture I drew (see first post).




I might even write up how I made it to save other newbies some time searching around for tutorials and things, if anyone is interested. I've kept over one hundred saves of my work in progress that I can use.

Nice work. You´might need to tweak the envelopes of the bones a little because the arms and legs look very unnatural when bent. But that shouldnt take that long
Elbows and the knees dont overlap while bending. Usualy two bones share some same points and if one of the bone moves it makes it look "smooth". THe "edges" of the human body seperate the two muscles of it and only some skin over it is moving. That way you can bend the arms and legs wihtout bulging the other side of the bone chain. Sounds complicated but thats just because i suck at explaining

Overall I like it. Too bad you didnt skined her a little bit better. Some shadows on the clothes may look a lot better. Also if she is not a super japanese geisha she might be a little too bright.

tris count would be nice to know

Yes, I know the weighting could be a lot better, but I ran out of time, and in the end I just had to get something in by the deadline. Another week and I could have re-done the weights and probably animated the long dress, too. This is my first time to make a model, and I had no idea how involved it all was.

As for the texturing, to be honest I don't like painted on shading all that much, and tried to minimise it. It looks too contrived to me, though I understand it is necessary given the shading limitations of the engine. The face is highlighted, and although it may not be very obvious in the screen shots (the level is at full-bright) there is some shading on the dress too. Of course, I'm sure the texture could have been done a lot better, and I'm going to have to hone my Photoshop skills and hit a few more tutorials on game model skinning.


EDIT> Oh, and it finshed on a little less than 2,300 tris I think.

Congratulations!! A great model, Russell! And congratulations, that you finished it in time!

Yet, after your experiences with Lightwave and the exporting to MED, I curious wether you would give the MED and its bone tools a try. And, give a comparision between the two programms!