Bone export via the 3ds max plugin

not really sure what all info to include, but the summary of my problem is, when i export a model with the 3ds max plugin, i only get the first bone in the skeleton, and i’ve run out of combinations of checkboxes to try that make sense. not sure what i’ve done wrong or if the exporter is broken.

what i have is two shapes, with a skin, and the bone “Head” added to them. without the skins, i get no bones (which seems reasonable) but with the skins, i only get Root.

now, if i add both Root and Head to my skin, i will get both Root and Head. but now my model is using 2 of my only 4 bone influences so this does not sound like the correct way to do it.

adding @Guillaume_Pelletier

Welcome to the forums!

Are you trying to export to Babylon or glTF format? Also, can you include the max scene so we can try to repro?

cheers m8 - funnily, i tried all four of the choices - babylon, binary babylon, gltf, and the other gltf. but plain ol babylon format is the one of choice.

https://pegasusgate.net/upl/player.max

this should be in its “working” state where my skins have both Root and Head added, such that exporting will work as expected. however the model is painted with both Root and Head then, so two of the four influences. i was trying to replicate other games i have modded, for example, in skyrim, the entire body is not painted NPC Root [Root], as skyrim also has the 4 influence rule.

to cause what i consider to be the strange behaviour, simply remove “Root” from the skins and export again, doing this is how i am getting only the Root in the final file with no Head.

it also has 2 animation groups, “walk” and “jump” and all that worked in the game when i exported it this one specific way. just trying to nail down the rigging and exporting process needed. if you hit play you can see the little tank man wobble “walk” and flip jump XD

my running theory was that only Head should be added to the skin, since that is what seems to create the envelopes and throw paint on the model. if this is just how it is, that means we’d have to add every bone to every skin and then unpaint the auto 100% paint it adds when you do that.

[edit] fixed the player.max link

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Ok, hopefully @Guillaume_Pelletier will have time to investigate :slight_smile:

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another thing i have found is if you have multiple meshes, if the skin doesn’t have the same bones on each mesh in the same order, you end up getting multiple skeletons. and there are still missing bones, so the mesh explodes in the preview tool.

here is a model that if you export you end up getting 28 skeletons lol, even though its literally only one.

https://pegasusgate.net/upl/player2.max

interesting about this second model is once again i only put the one bone each mesh needs to know about. and when you inspect the skeletons, you get the full tree to that bone, except you don’t get that bone. example, on export skeleton #0 should be the skeleton the head, and it goes from bRoot all the way up to bNeck but no bHead, what the mesh with that skin was painted to.