by mstewart152 » Thu Aug 16, 2018 2:32 pm
mstewart152
Thu Aug 16, 2018 2:32 pm
thanks for that Guru. That is what i ended up doing. Kind of a bummer octane can not see the modeler pivot points though.... here is main reason why.
For a car, no big deal, put the wheel at origin... and move on......but.
For something more complex, such as a layered Humanoid Robot.... with each arm, leg, finger, etc... on different layers and pivot points all figured out.... this becomes much more of a pain...
I know you did you bicycle robot guy using one layer mesh and weight maps... BUT I do not prefer that method because it slows lightwave performance way down when it has to look at TONS of vertices and weight map associations. If you Parent individual pieces to bones, its response time in the view port is WAY faster. Also, you dont need bones at all for that matter if its not deforming. But that would be a massive pain sense Octane can not see the modeler pivot points.... Re-arranging every piece by hand on a complex robot..... that would not be fun.....
One Alternative to this I have thought of is this.
1. Model the robot as you like.... get all pieces where they should be......
2. Save a separate version for piece break outs.
3. Layout bones using single layer version as reference
4. Put each piece at origin facing down Z axis
5. Parent each piece to the proper bone. The piece will automatically snap to the correct position. Assuming your bones rest positions are zeroed out.
This method would achieve the correct layout, and would be instance able by octane as well. It would also be very fast to animate, because your not using weight maps to separate pieces.