Need help importing multiple skeletal mesh ?

Legacy UDK Content Creation and Design
1

Not sure how to say it.>multiple meshes is what I suspect it is.(two in my case)
I have a fbx of a animated character holding a crowbar.Here is a screenshot from maya:

On the left in the outliner we can see that the ''body ‘’ is the character,CatrigHub001 is the skeleton and point 001 is the crowbar with its bone.All plays fine in maya.

If i import this fbx in udk with default settings i only get the main character and his attack animation.The crowbar is missing.
If when importing in udk i select the Import Morph,Import Animation and Import Rigid animation the character will be imported with his animation and the crowbar will be also imported but in a separate file from the main body with a copy of the attack animation :mad::mad:

Than if i go to the animset editor and select the main character, than… at least on the left there is the option to select a ‘‘Extra mesh 1’’

So in ‘‘Extra mesh 1’’ I selected the stupid crowbar.Now if i try the animation, the player does his attack animation but the crowbar stays static and is not attached to the hand to follow the animation.

How should i proceed.Am i making a mistake when exporting from maya,or when importing the fbx in udk or everything is fine and there is a final step in UDK which I don’t know to combine the character and crowbar so that they can share the animation like in maya?

My head hurts really bad :frowning:

2

Hello dude.

Yeah, I will help you, as I already did suffer all kinds of bugs you can ever imagine :smiley: whenever importing meshes from 3dsmax to UDK.

So let’s go. Just use my phyloshophy for bug solving: KIS - Keep It Simple :smiley:

1- First of all, does the cowbar has some special animation? Supposing that the cowbar does not have any kind of special animation, and it is just being holded by the character hand, so the character hand is what animates (as you said, it only has one bone). If this is the case, then the solution is very simple my friend.

First of all, whenever working with character for UDK, a good practice is to have a separated file for the character model in T Pose, and another separated file for the caharacter model with animation (I do this way).

You simply need to bind the crowbar mesh to the hand skeleton of the character with absolute influence (you don’t need a separated bone for this). Whenever the crowbar mesh is skinned to the hand bone (bind mesh to skeleton in maya), it will follow the animation of the hand. This is the true for any rigid meelee weapon like sword, knife, and so on.

So do this (I am supposing you only have the animated scene, and not the model in T Pose). Move the animation slider to frame 0, make a copy of the crowbar, remove the skeleton and mesh bind of this duplicated crowbar, you position and rotate the duplicated crowbar mesh to fit in place of the original crowbar mesh (in 3dsmax we have Tools -> align), then you select the right hand bone and the crowbar mesh and click on Mesh Bind (I think this is how to skin in maya). You need to check if the hand bone has 100% influence on the crowbar mesh, if not, you just manually paint skin weights.

After doing this, you just export again the character to UDK, and import it again, and it will work. In UDK, whenever two or more meshes are influenced by the same skeleton they are imported as a single mesh.

However, you need to double check your Maya FBX Export Options. I use these configs for Skeletal Mesh, and Static Mesh export (in 3dsmax, however, UDN also have the export config for maya):

3

Yep, that worked awesome mate! I removed the bone from the weapon and skin bind the weapon to the bone wrist of the skeleton and now the thing imports fine.Looks like udk doesn’t like multiple fbx meshes with their own skeletons at once.Everything needs to be one whole mesh and one skeleton.I have the feeling that the FBX of UE4 does support what I was doing.I suspect udk was only updated to fbx 2013-2014 instructions.
Also i saw on UDN that the Extra mesh 1,2,3 and 4 in the animset editor are only for visualization purposes and don’t play/inherit animations which was a stupid move.If epic did one more step and made it simple to attach a accessory it loud have been awesome.At least we can make sockets :rolleyes:

Thank you pal :wink:

4

Finnaly I helped someone here :smiley: :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

I think almost 10 years working with 3D made me learn something :cool::cool::cool:

I always do this, especially for my character attachments, like I have done for my new protagonist model, the ammo belt, the backpack, the pistol holster, the knife, and so on.

I use multipe meshes inside 3dsmax, because, like I said, I make my characters kinda lego :smiley: using different body parts from different characters models. If I would attach the meshes in 3dsmax, I would probally have to adjust the uvw map for each attached part. However, letting them as separated objects makes my work easier, especially whenever rigging the hands.

The default UT3 Skeleton has a problem on the hands, that whenever the default rifle idle animation plays, and aswell the IK controller for the hands, they stretch the hands extremelly which makes the wrist very thin, and ugly, so whenever I have the hand as a separate object, I can rig it with 100% influence to the hand bone (I don’t rig the fingers, as for my game I dont need it), so the hand can rotate without stretching the forearm. However, for this trick work, i kind extend the forearm mesh (modelling) to “enter” inside the hand, and the tip of the forearm, I skin it to the hand bone, so the forearm will rotate slightly whenever the arm rotates, and the mesh part of the forearm which will stretch on the rotation, is hidden inside the hand mesh.

However, for this to work, I use hand meshes with gloves (or arms with jacket), I avoid use a naked arm on which the hand and forearm are one single mesh.

Cheers and good luck with your game.