[Ben Barker]

I trying to link this character to the biped with physique.
Everything links properly except the arms.
Here is what it looks like:

Now when I bend the arm, this happens:

(never mind what happens to the body, I can fix that easily, just the bicep).

The arm gets totally distorted, as you can see. It looks like a big part of the bicep isn't completely linked to the biped, but the lower bicep near the elbow is, and some parts near the shoulder are.

I've tried everything I can think of to properly link those bicep vertices. I gone into figure mode and made the upper arm of the biped huge, to guarantee it covers fully every vertex in the arm. I've selected the vertices manually and linked them to the upper arm link with a weight of 1000. I've tried Rigid links, Deformable links, nothing I do makes any difference at all.
I must be missing something really obvious here. I just want those vertices to be attached to the upper arm link absolutely with physique. If I have to use linked Xform I'm going to be really pissed off.
Can Physique just work for me properly ONE TIME? That's all I ask.

Any help? Thanks in advance.

[toast!]

hehe , try bones pro it works fine with biped . Physique is a bitch ; you always get pain to adjust vertex ; mainly with heavy poly characters , on thing that works if you did use a suvdivision surface is to put the physique modifier before the meshsmooth part


ho , forget to ask you if you set up initially the pose like on your first picture or like in the second one ; characters bones are easier to setup with the bones initally like on your second pic (arms straight up)

hope it will help
cheers
Toast

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givemoilafonk!

[This message has been edited by toast! (edited March 23, 2001).]

[Frost]

Ben: You got overlapping envelopes.. most likely an envelope in the abdomen or torso is pulling part of the arm off.

As far as I know, it's easy enough to exclude vertices from being affected by certain bones, and you can lock vertex selections, etc.

Dealing with envelopes is not always fun... I prefer the longer hand vertex editing method...

[Ben Barker]

Yeah Frost, that's what it was. I do it vertex by vertex for low-poly models, but I just don't feel like it for this one. Heh, whenever I do that I remember Paul Steed's article where he said a burgundy vertex, used by several bones, is "sorta like a vertex ho".

Tron: I model the characters arms down and elbow adducted so that when the arms are fully raised and extended they won't get all screwed up. Heh, I should start saving for MAX 4 I guess, I hear the new character studio can fix that.
Anyway, I think what I will do from now on is model the characters arms down, then manually extend the arms before setting up bones.

This guy is the King from the movie "The Cell", BTW. I should be done in a couple of days.
Thanks for the help.