Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Note
Alternatively, you can select just the body geometry and press the Bind
button on the GCDM shelf. Provided that the base joint is called Root, this
button will automatically select the proper joints and bind the mesh to
them.
We now have to attach her face in a slightly different way. Because in this case the vertices
of her face are controlled via blend shapes, certain game engines will have trouble if the
vertices are also controlled by a number of joints. As far as I am aware, this conflict is due
to the game engine's having to handle two types of deformation at the same time: It can be
quite processor intensive, so using just one method is preferred. However, we still need the
head to move with the skeleton, so it will have to be affected by one joint (the head joint).
Sometimes simply parenting the face geometry to the head joint will suffice, but you can
alsobindit,andmakingsureitisonlyinfluencedbytheheadjointwillcertainly pleasethe
programmers.
For either method, binding or linking, all of the face vertices will essentially be controlled
100percentbytheheadjointalone.Withthatinmind,it'scrucialtoalsomakesurethatall
vertices bordering the face mesh are also 100 percent bound to this same joint. If not, the
mesh will break apart at those seams during posing and animation.
Note
It's a good idea to talk through this issue with your team's lead program-
mer, who may have specific ideas on how it should be handled.
1. Select the main head joint, called Head.
2. Holding Shift, select the face geometry.
3. Go to Skin > Bind Skin > Smooth Bind, and set Bind To to Selected Joints, and
Bind Method to Closest Joint. Set both Max Influences and Dropoff Rate to 1 ,
which will fully weight the face to the Head joint. We don't need to do any more
work on it.
4. Save the file as Kila_Bound_BS.mb.
Both the blend-shapes and joint-based versions of our characters are now at exactly the
samestage.Thismeansweonlyneedtoedittheweightinginformationontheirbodies,be-
cause the joint-based faces were completed in Chapter 13 . So we will just look at the joint-
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