Edit: SORRY, those are not the original screen shots. I accidently overwrote the images on my server, so what you see are not the images the thread is talking about. Never mind, the problem has been solved anyway.

Hi everybody,

I seem to be one step away from finishing my first 3d leaderhead, but I've encountered a problem which has really left me at my wit's end.

Here's a screenshot of my leaderhead (Cardinal Richelieu):

http://www.fritzenkoetter.org/Exchange/Richelieu.jpg

The animation seems to work all right, but there are two nasty errors:

1. As it can cleary be seen, the left arm and the left hand are horribly crippled. The other arm is affected as well, only you can't really see it because it's around the ellbow. In the max file all looks perfectly okay, but after exporting the body to nif I get this.

2. There's a strange red border on the lower end of the background picture. Part of it can be seen in this picture as well.

To No. 1: In my max scene the modifier order is as follows:
First the mesh
Then the TurboSmooth Modifier
Third the Skin
Finally the UVW

I tried to move the TurboSmooth to the last position. The proportions looked perfect then (also after exporting), only I couldn't get it animated any more.

I feel I'm really stuck on this. Any help would be most appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Here's what happens when I put the TurboSmooth modifier last on my list:

http://www.fritzenkoetter.org/Exchange/Richelieu2.jpg

The shapes are perfectly smooth, but the body doesn't move an inch. Instead I have those boxes flying around which make me crazy ... I took the skeleton from Frederick, and those "boxes" are children of _HAND_L_CONTROL, _HAND_R_CONTROL, _ELBOW_L_CONTROL and _ELBOW_R_CONTROL. Those controls lead a life of their own, still doing the "Frederick the Great" movement, and I have no clue how I can make them follow the Richelieu movement instead.

Maybe anyone knows what those "boxes" are for? I'm completely lost.

It all seems to come down to those controls. I really don't know how to handle them. Maybe they have been imported into the wrong position, so maybe anyone could explain to me, what those _ELBOW_L_CONTROL etc. things are for and where they have to be aligned to (and how you do that)?

For the moment the problem seems to have solved itself ... Apparently the body section of my model was too rough, so I've started to re-rig it with a more smoother skin. Animation now seems to work fine, but it's annoying to do the whole rigging again - tedious beyond belief. At least I can reuse my old UVW map.

This looks fantastic!! Perhaps the reason you've not received any help is that a lot of us haven't reached the level you're at. Fabulous work and I hope you explain how you did it when you've time!