Ian Ross has just released a book on Anim8or. It's perect for a beginner and a good reference for experienced users. It contains detailed chapters on every aspect, with many examples. Get your own copy here: "Anim8or Tutorial Book"
View->Preferences->Backside needs to be unchecked. However, apparently it no longer does anything. I'll post it as a bug report in the v0.98 discussion forum.
Until it's fixed, you can give it a two-sided material, and for the second side of the material give it 0 trans and 0 spec.
The MMB shortcut with Alt+RMB is not longer available. Alt is used to switch to Arc-Rotate mode.I had thought about using Shift+RMB or Ctrl+RMB but those are needed for other functionality. As it stands now you need a 3-button mouse.Aw...
And note what Water Music says about the collar bone. The pose in your screenshot is impossible. You can't lift your arms like that and not have your shoulders come up above the height of your chin.Yeah, I forgot to lift clavice bones. GOnna do it right now =)
To start, I'd recommend minimizing the number of vertices right at the joint. For the parts of your model that stay fairly static you can load up as much detail as your system can handle, but at the joints the fewer points you can get away with the easier your life becomes.I try to make the whole vertex count as low as possible - I want to use models in a game later. Aaaaand I don't really think I can cut points near joints lower than now - they would look even more horrible than now.
There should be some tutorials out there on the web, somewhere, as this is a very common problemBut no tips in general. Almost every tutorial was for 3D Max and they used something that is available only there.
Sorry, I forgot to ask also, did you rename the new mesh to exactly whatever the old mesh was named as?
If you use 'Weights' instead of 'Bone Influences' you might want to try this.
After you have imported and replaced your object, go to figure mode.
Select the 'Multi-bone skin' button, double click your object and set to 'Bone Influences'.
When the envelopes show up, double click again and set to weights.
I rarely use 'Weights' in Anim8or but I did find a problem after importing with them.
If this doesn't help...a little trial and error works wonders.
To retain the weights in Milkshape, you need to export your Anim8or sequence
with weights enabled in figure mode.
Also I free all bones in the 'bones parameters' to make sure none are oriented at weird angles.
I've had no issues with this conversion, however touching up the weights in Milkshape is a must.
Edit: Just wanted to say, from what I can see of your model, it looks great.Thanks!
Cheers
First, I apologize since I sent my last response from my phone and couldn't verify those statements 100%. CrashDrive is correct, Anim8or's figures still point to the mesh in the object, so long as the name of the mesh is the same as the original.
I finally got on my computer and tested it to see about the vertex indices bit. I exported a shape to .obj, and loaded and saved it using Blender, UVMapper Classic, DeepUV, and 3DCoat. All of the programs seemed to retain the same vertex indices except for DeepUV, which was my primary unwrapper for many years...it explains why Kreator and CrashDrive had no issues with it when using Blender and UVMapper, versus my experience with DeepUV.
So in a nutshell, most programs will be ok with you importing their version of your mesh and swapping it with the original -- you don't have to do the notepad trick.
