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[Razorback]

So I finally got the hang of rigging a character, and after all my hard work I excitedly export it into an .X file so I can experiment with it on WME. When I get there this is what I find... 


I get the same results on the Mesh Viewer. What ungodly mess is that?! I can't even begin to understand what I could have done wrong.

I will try to explain what I did to see if any of you can help.
First, if I export it without any animations, it looks fine. I've tried all combinations of options on the PandaExporter to see if it would give out any different results. It didn't.
My character is using a Biped for a skeleton and I only skinned the joints, all other parts where just linked to their respective limbs.
The character is comprised of a lot of separate objects; it isn’t all the same mesh.

At first I thought it had to do with some of the pieces being inverted instances of other pieces. But I deleted those and made proper copies and that also didn't work.

I've just ran out of ideas, if anyone could help me out here I'd be eternally thankful.

[Razorback]

I solved the problem, I'll explain here how to fix it for posteriority in case of someone else ending up in the same situation.

You need to reset the Xform, and then you'll see which objects are affected, they will have flipped normals. To fix that select the affected objects and apply a normal modifier, then flip the normals back.

I don't know if its necessary, but I ended up converting everything back to editable poly, just to get a feeling that everything is back to normal.

There ya go, I'm glad thats over.

[adonf]

"reset X form" is always a good thing to do in MAX before exporting (except if it's a camera), and so is collapsing the modifier stack (maybe not all the stack though, at least not the skinning modifiers)

some of the problems in your exported mesh could also be the result of double-sided materials not being exported to the X format, so check that your normals point out of the mesh and not inside.

as for the pandasoft options, i did a quick wiki page of the options that work for us. we use biped and fully skinned characters (we tested the "skin" and "physique modifiers, both worked), you can find it here

edit: oops, didn't se that the person asking the question and the first one to answer were the same 

[Banbury]

From experience I can add:

- never mirror meshes.
- if you move, rotate or scale a mesh you have to reset Xform, too.
- adjusted pivots will be ignored by some operations, e.g. attachments (I think this is related to the whole Xform thing).

Greetings

Banbury

[Razorback]

Thanks guys, turns out I spoke too soon, I'm having a bit of trouble getting the skined objects working after the export. But I'll get back to you on that once I have a better understanding of what I'm doing wrong.

Now, adonf, you mention that both the physique and the skin modifiers work on the .X file, but on the wiki you wrote (which is great btw) you mention that skin (vertices in particular) does NOT work. Is that just outdated info?

[adonf]

sorry but i don't remember too well and i deleted my test results after we decided to use physique for all models in our project.

i think that we decided to use physique because it always works. skinning may work, or may not, depending on the model and the way it's skinned but we were not able to determine exactly what could be causing problems.

i hope this helps