next question on hierarchies

interesting. When I opened up my scene again, MOST of my objects previously attempted to be assigned as skin are now skin. I had a bit of a row with a forearm section that wanted to be assigned elsewhere, bu I assugned it downstream to the hand bone, and my skeletal controller showed the object prperly assigned to the forarm, and the box turned to a bone when I set it.

It seems to be a balancing act, but behhaving a little better today. Maybe my cpu is p.o.’d that I worked it so long, and feels better after a nap.

I really hope you guys don’t mind, it seems like I’m flooding the board with questions these days, but since I lost my access to max, this prog has been a life saver. I’m also very charged, I like 3DC.

When I’m assigning modified objects to a bones hierarchy, such as the ‘shoe’ object’s connected to the… foot bone… the ‘hand’ object’s connected to the… hand bone, SOMEtimes the object icon in the hierarchy turns into a bone icon, sometimes it stays a little brown box. That’s not the part that bothers me.

SOMEtimes, when I assign an object mid stream down a chain of bones, the assignment winds up being connected to the bone up or down stream of where I meant it to go, such as: lower arm object is assigned to arm/lower bone, but when I open group properties, it shows the lower arm object assigned to the upper arm bone. This sometimes leads to some kinetic problems when I am trying to move only the down stream object, the up stream object may follow it, disarticulating the model at the elbow.

I’ve gone over the heirarchy to see that they are properly assigned, and I’m pretty sure they are. One thing, I don’t always have every bone assigned an object, such as no ankle, so my ankle bone stays unassigned. I have tried ungrouping the object and re-assigning, this doesn’t seem to help.

Working off this much info, can someone offer a suggestion or two? or maybe how this works?

Much appreciated
gmani

well i’ll try my best…

1. when you connect a bone to an object, as far as i know the object is no longer able to be edited.- that is why it has the bone symbol, because it is now a skin for a bone in the hierarchies.

2. now as far as objects ending up in wierd places i would have to see it to kind of know. but it is always best to go back and drag and drop/ move around the bones to form hierarchies. also too- are you using the default 3dc skeleton? it sound like you are. in terms of having unused bones just attach them to prevent a mess. also it produces more fluid structures and movement range.

-korben

yes, pretty well undertand #1

#2, skeleton is the one on the left of two in 3dc, not an import or anything.

I’ll try dragging around some more, but I have yet to figure out why not all the objects assign as skin (yet, I hope), nor a rhyme or reason to what a bone will get assigned to what object when it is not right, up stream or down. I’ll try assigning the vacant bones, see if that helps.

In terms of bones, these are fairly simple geometries, single object to a bone, one bone to an object.

What is the difference between the left and the right skeleton choice in 3dc? One is kind of dashed, one is solid looking in the objects menu…?
Thanks korben, will try
gmani