I thought of this ( but havn't tried it yet) and wondered if its being done or fesable to do...

Make your model, then create a 2nd frame of the same model and unwrap the model in the second frame and use that frame to lay out your skinning image map.
That way you don't have to try putting the original model back togeather

anyone know if this works?

You cannot actually unwrap the model in one frame while that unwrapped parts of the mesh are still connected in the other frames.

Unwrapping the mesh is only possible on the skin, because it doesn't touch the model in its shape in 3D.
The mesh on the skin picture saves only the information which pixels are in a certain polygon.

The (3D)frames are all identical in respect of their vertices('points') and polygons(faces) and connections.

That's what I just think relating on expieriences with the MED, I didn't really read it anywhere.
If I'm wrong, pleeease, correct me!

i just tried this a moment ago in MED worked fine

made a simple model. then add a frame (frame2)
move the mesh around break a seam into it. ( i just subdivided a few faces till i made a gap along one area then deleted all the extra faces and verts to cut the mesh open)

now just flatten the mesh out an mdl skin works fine for this now vs grabbing faces

paint it up , relaoded it back in then just delete frame2 if happy with the skin. skin still stays intact for frame 1

Grimber, you did a part of the tutorial, while I had less time to continue.

Wanted to add some pics of my state of... (no idea how to call it in english - even have no idea how to finish such a sentence in german)...'work'?




Not the nicest one, but one 'with a manly chest' (quote, bupaje) , but - experiences to give report about. I'll add a pic or more about my walk animation in few minutes or a few minutes more.

Possibly the first bone animated model pictures from MED in the forum!

all of it looks great ( far better than anything i can do yet) but for the tilting as he walks. instead of a tilt left and right the normal human body walk is a slite bouncing motion from the hips up. as steps forward the hips drop slightly and then raises to its full hight upwards as the leg is straight under the torso.

hips and shoulders also have a slite rotation with the swing of arms and legs.
as right leg goes out hips rotate countercloskwise, left leg out rotate hips clockwise. same motion with shoulders and arms.

( women that want to show off thier 'bottems and tops' exagerate this hip and shoulder rotation. look at russels sig pic. to get her 'front' to swing mroe she windmills her arms behind her making her shoulders swing more)

hehe sorry , studied art allot on my own when i was younger. Human motion was part of it to understand drawning people in motion.

Another not perfect animation:




Since I found a quite simple way to make animated gifs out of MED, I can't get tied to post gifs

I want to add some pics and explanations about skinnning as far I have some experiences.

As Grimber already said:

Add a frame. It is a special frame to deform the model to be copied comfortably onto the skin image.

Then mark a side of the head to rotate it until it is parallel to the (human) face. Same with the other side. There is only one 'row' of pologons left at the backside as you can see on the picture. With 'Edit' --> 'Move Frames...' you must put this 'skinning' frame at the first place, because you cannot create a skinning mesh in the skin editor from another frame 'place'.


Open the skin editor:



In our case we have the single head so we can create an MDL mapping.

Normally we have the whole model: in that case we have ti change the mode to 'face mode', choose 'Options' and --> 'Sync Skin Selection'.
And in the Skin Editor we have to choose Create MD2 mapping.


'View' --> 'Lines' --> 'Wireframe' gives you the chance to see what faces actually are marked. Don't forget to switch to the 'face mode' in the Skin Editor too.

(If you want to export the picture of the mapping, what is nessecary to paint the skin later in a grafik programm, you have to change the 'View' of the 'Lines' from Wireframe to 'Lines'.)

Here the result of our MDL mapping:
Left the backside, right the front. The back shows parts of the ears and other faces of the frontside this has to be modified in the 'skinning frame' to get rid of the seems that you would get exactly at these faces. Repeat marking and creating the mapping




Compare the last two pictures to understand the difference and the similarity.


Later more.

Thats cool. I been messing with it. some may say its allot of work to unwrap the mesh like this, but i'm finding so far its easier then grabbing faces and jockying them around, also reduces the chances of a seam between faces where a multi grab of one area ( like the head) creates several possible seams that are a pain to fix. ( where 2 faces meet but you got them on 2 seperate grabs can sometimes make a seam you can't fix unless you redo your grab. especialy it seems the closer you get to the tolorance limit for the facing of the grab. )

hehe I hope that makes some sense. :P