5 - Advanced Rigging a Character

[moonsense715]

Author: Läubi

Skill level: 5

 

This written tutorial will show you how to make your character model ready to be used in the W3D engine.

 

Step 1

First we need our Character, here you can see the Umagon from Reborn

 

Step 2

Then we need the Skeleton, depending on what Character-type we have, import either the Male or the Female character

 

(Here you can download: Female skeleton, Male skeleton)

Select All and press Ok.

 

Step 3

Now we need to align and resize the character, because in most cases it will look like this:

 

To make your life easier, you should hide all K_ bones and the old mesh, as well as the Worldboxes

 

Try to align the character as closely as possible to fit the bones!!

 

Step 4

Tweak up the base position, so the character fits the bones.

As you saw on the previous screenshot the arms and the feet/legs don`t fit that good, so we need to align them, so hope that the creator of the model has already designed the model to fit, otherwise you'll have a lot of fun trying to align it properly 

 

It is very important that you align it as close as possible, as that will make your life a lot easier later and will reduce the amount of animation errors you later might get!

 

Now it fits the bones a lot better:

 

Step 5

Unhide all parts, delete the merged Head and body mesh. The female file also contains a camera object that you can delete as it's not needed.

If you have not done it yet, save your work into a new file 

 

Step 6

Now we will Link the Mesh to the WWSkin (that's the small CrossBone) by selecting:

 

and the click on the mesh and drag to the WWSkin:

 

Now the model has the WWSkin Binding Modifier applied, we will now use this to bind the vertices to the bones:

 

Select all vertices and press on the Auto-Link Button

Congratulations, the smart part is done now 

 

Step 7

Time for fixing errors, or did you think it is THAT easy???

For better working on the next steps you can again hide all the K_ Bones the Worldbox, the select all the c_ bones and activate the Display as Box option:

 

Now move the animation slider to Frame 1. You will notice that your Character moves.

 

Move through the different frames and watch out for any misaligned faces.

 

Select the Bone the faces "should" be aligned to. Here it is the correct bone, write it down, or remember it, and select the misaligned faces, and click on Link to Bone by Name:

 

Find and select the bone the faces belong to:

 

Press Ok and if your faces are aligned right, well done. 

Repeat these steps until all faces are aligned correctly.

 

Step 8 - Export your final result

Export it with following Settings:

Female Characters use S_B_Human as existing skeleton:

 

Male Characters use S_A_Human:

 

You find the needed Skeleton Files in the corresponding folder from where you have merged the skeleton file.

Now you can test the Character In-Game and see if there are any other problems you might need to fix. Have fun on your hard way!