Skeleton with different proportions and rotations [Solved]

[Nedarb7]

How would I go about making a basepose that has different proportions and rotations for a model?

[JimmyAngler]

Do you mean like going from T-pose to A-pose?

[Nedarb7]

I mean from human proportions to alien proportions. Geonosian to be specific... human tall geonosian.

[jedimoose32]

You can scale the human animations by adding \scale 1.3 or whatever number you want in the munge.bat of each human_# animation folder. However that will scale the skeleton of every human in your mod so if you just want the one unit to be bigger you'll need to copy all the human_ animations into a new folder, call it something like tallhuman, fix up the munge.bat so it munges a new animation set called tallhuman, and munge. There's more to it than that, I've just highlighted the main points, but check the jedi creation documentation for the rest of the details.

Edit: To be more clear, you only need to edit the basepose for the skeleton to scale. And I guess my answer didn't really address the issue if proportion... For that you would need to go to the bone's properties and make it longer or shorter.

[MileHighGuy]

You can scale the human animations by adding \scale 1.3 or whatever number you want in the munge.bat of each human_# animation folder. However that will scale the skeleton of every human in your mod so if you just want the one unit to be bigger you'll need to copy all the human_ animations into a new folder, call it something like tallhuman, fix up the munge.bat so it munges a new animation set called tallhuman, and munge. There's more to it than that, I've just highlighted the main points, but check the jedi creation documentation for the rest of the details.

You only need to scale up a basepose. The animations will still work without anything extra.

And yes Nedarb you can change the proportions. select a bone and click on the property page (press enter I think) to change the length. Use the transform tool rotate. I think you need to remove all keys first. I made a topic relate to this a while ago.

EDIT: And I don't know any way to do this with symmetry so I think you have to do it bone by bone.

[jedimoose32]

Off topic: You ninja'd my edit. I didn't think that could happen!

On topic: What he said.

[Anakin]

i hope you don't need to make a new animatioset.

nice update on the model. i realy like how it's looking now.

[Nedarb7]

And yes Nedarb you can change the proportions. select a bone and click on the property page (press enter I think) to change the length. Use the transform tool rotate. I think you need to remove all keys first. I made a topic relate to this a while ago.

EDIT: And I don't know any way to do this with symmetry so I think you have to do it bone by bone.

Thanks, that's what I needed. I'll try it later today.

-EDIT-
Hmmm the model deforms once I envelope it. Any ideas?

I may have unkeyed the skeleton after changing the rotation and lengths... if that is an issue.

[Anakin]

Select the model msh and look for envekope operator. Right klick and select mute. Later you make something like use this as basepose and than you can unmute (i think this is the way it should be done. I never got this working.)

[MileHighGuy]

I think you have to unkey the skeleton first, using remove all animation I think. This thread should help you:

viewtopic.php?f=36&t=30443&hilit=basepose

[Nedarb7]

I'll see what happens then.

Would a model (clone sv model) enveloped to the skeleton before I make changes cause a problem?

-EDIT-
The sv model appears to have been the problem. I'll let you guys know if any other issues show up.

-EDIT-
There seems to be an issue with my skeleton... When ingame it looks crammed, and it the model is halfway in the ground. If I use the standard skeleton everything works fine (it just doesn't look how it is supposed to, but that was expeced), so this seems to be an error with the basepose.

Ignore the red text. It looks like bone root is taking the place of the dummy root null. Almost like the bone root is frozen at 0,0,0. Animations work fine, but they seem to spread out from bone root instead of whatever it is supposed to, making it look like the unit is trying to curl into a ball.

On export I made sure all the bones were keyed, deleted all models on the skeleton, selected frame 1, branch selected dummyroot, opened ze tools, checked animation, checked "export current frame as basepose", and exported.

Does that sound right? Did I miss something?

[The Nasal Abyss]

You cannot resize bones without it causing problems ingame. Any changes you make will not matter; the skeleton will still deform to fit the default animations. (making things look cramped and wrong)

It would be much better to adjust your model to fit the skeleton.

[Nedarb7]

Hmm. Are you positive? Take the battle droid skeleton for example, it has a longer neck bone than human models. I'm also pretty sure that the geonosian has different bone lengths, though it could just be a smaller skeleton. But going back to the battle droid, there are no problems ingame with it unless you aren't using the "bdroid" skeleton. Only when you don't set SkeletonName to bdroid is when deforming happens (deform is caused by the neck bone being smaller.). On the other hand, the model works flawlessly when the skeleton is being used.

As long as you have a skeleton animation file to go along with it it should work fine.

[The Nasal Abyss]

My past experience trying to make skeleton with better, more human proportions (The SWBF default skeleton is horribly proportioned) was that I could never get it to work correctly, no matter if I had munged an animation file with it or not. But that's just my experience. You may find something that works that I did not.

[jedimoose32]

As long as you have the right skeleton then everything will work appropriately, provided the model is enveloped correctly as well (e.g. you cannot successfully use the Grievous skeleton on a human model due to the fact that he only has two spine bones, and four arms). Other than that you should not have any difficulty swapping out skeletons, or for that matter creating a custom one.

[Nedarb7]

Interesting. Well I won't give up now as I don't see any reason why this shouldn't work.

Just quoted this so you don't have to look for it:

It looks like bone root is taking the place of the dummy root null. Almost like the bone root is frozen at 0,0,0. Animations work fine, but they seem to spread out from bone root instead of whatever it is supposed to, making it look like the unit is trying to curl into a ball.

On export I made sure all the bones were keyed, deleted all models on the skeleton, selected frame 1, branch selected dummyroot, opened ze tools, checked animation, checked "export current frame as basepose", and exported.

Does that sound right? Did I miss something?

[jedimoose32]

I have found that when using the default skeleton it is best not to change rotation or translation at all, otherwise that can happen (for me the unit folded himself in half at the hips). I played around with keying and un-keying and various other things, and couldn't get it to work so I ended up simply changing my model to fit the default skeleton. What changes did you make to the skeleton?

[JimmyAngler]

Can't you just scale the animations to make the guy bigger?

[Nedarb7]

Solved, thank you all for your help.

Solution:
Imported the model so that the bones were nulls, deleted model, keyed it on rotation and translation, and exported as animation on frame 1.