problem exporting skin surface to shockwave

# 1 16-07-2005 , 05:05 AM

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Join Date: Dec 2004

Posts: 203

Hi there all,
I have this problem. After I skin my character with smooth bind, I tried exporting my project to shocwave but in the middle of exporting I get an error which states this....

"Error: pelvisJoint-skeleton: Error converting this object. Please check geometry, normals, shaders, and skeleton/skin data. Use Polygons | Cleanup to remove non-manifold geometry and faces with zero map area."

if any of you don't know what a "pelvisJoint-skeleton" is, it is an object node that holds all of the bones, surfaces, and shaders, that are all compressed into one node that the shockwave exporter creates. How it gets it's name is that it comes from the name of your root bone and adds the word "-skeleton" to it. So in other words if your root bone is called "hipJoint" then the exporter calles this node "hipJoint-Skeleton" etc.

Anywho, since I didn't save the file after I skined the surface, I re-opened the file so that now the surfaces are not skinned and tried the following....

1. polygon cleanup, and that didn't fix it.
2. I then tried looking at normals and I wasn't too sure what the program ment on that other than maybe reversed normals. However as for checking if there where any revered normals I couldn't find any that where reveresed
3. I then tried re-building the skeleton and re-skin the surface but that didn't fix the problem either.

4. As for shaders I don't see what could be wrong with that considering all my shaders are lamberts which is the basic shader that you use for shockwave.

5. The last thing I tried was doing process of limination. Doing so I found out that it is my character's shoes that is causing this problem.

So my question is without having to re-draw my character's shoes, do any of you know of anything that I could do to fix the shoes? Is there something in the properties that is set wrong? The normals seem to be facing in their right directions. The only thing I haven't checked was the input & output connections to the shoes. Do you think that could be the problem? If so then how do I reveal all input and output connections to a surface? I know that in hypershade window, you click on the input & output connections button but it doesn't seem to show everything to the selected surface.

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# 2 16-07-2005 , 05:35 AM

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Join Date: Dec 2004

Posts: 203

I'm sorry I made a mistake to which one is causing the problem. It is the ikHandle that is connected to my character's feet. Though here is the bad part. Re-building the legs and the ikhandles don't solve the problem. In addition, it can't be a problem adding IKhandles because I have IKHandles attatched to both wrists. Is it because I am using IKRPsolvers to the ankles. I read somewhere that said that IKrpSolvers are good for the wrist but never said anything whether you should use this type for the ankles.

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# 3 16-07-2005 , 04:24 PM

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Join Date: Dec 2004

Posts: 203

more Shockwave/Maya support

I got an idea of what I can do. I found a web site that shows a listing of things that are not documented in the help file that comes with Director. At this site it states their are lingo scripts that allows you to use IK chains with-in Director. So basically what I am going to do is just not add any IK handles in Maya, but instead add them in Director. I can then write the scripts that will allow me to make my walk-cycle and other things that I want it to do. If any of you are interested you may email me and I will give you more information about how to do this. Eventally I will have a web site once I get the lingo script running and then all you would have to do is download the file. I would like to post back to let you guys know when it is ready but I don't know where I am allow to post my web site in this forum so I am going to look that up first.

Why I am saying this when tecknically this forum is usally questions just in Maya? The reason is because I am getting sick and tired not finding anything that has to deal with Maya and Shockwave. I had my charcter finished over a week ago, and I think it is about time this community needs more support on Shockwave/Maya. It seems that after doing a lot of researching on the net, most issues are delt with users using Plasma or Studio Max. Yeah, I do have Plasma, but support has been discontinued because they are not making this program anymore. However, in the Discreet discusion board users have said that Plasma is a smaller version of Max 4, but I could never find any docs on it. My guess on this is I think it is because Discreet has now just release Studio Max 7. In addition I will never think of buying this version considering that not only you need Studio Max, you also need Studio Character if you want to add any bones to your characters which I think it is stupid.

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problem exporting skin surface to shockwave

more Shockwave/Maya support

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