LH: Distorted leaderhead question

[Panopticon]

Hello,

I began to learn to model leaderheads yesterday. I'm trying to improve on a model of Antonio Salazar from an old mod, based on FDR. The only changes have been:

(a) changing a texture to remove a moustache, and
(b) flattening the nose by altering the shape of polygons in Blender.

The .nif renders fine in NifSkope and SceneViewer. The problem arises when the head is animated in the game itself. Polygons stick out randomly like big triangles, or spikes. I don't have a screenshot at the moment, but I presume this is a known phenomenon. I've tried to search the forums but I can't find any new information.

Can anyone help me find out the reason for this?

 

[Refar]

You damaged the skin instance (the connection between the mesh and the armature for animation). You need to check the vertex weights on the model - they should be assigned to sensible bones - if you see a part of his mouth - just for example - having a Vertex Weight on left foot, or having no VW at all, it's bad.

It could have happened during post work after the export. You didn't mentioned if you did any or if you are awarethat postwork is mandatory.
Here a tutorial covering the basic procedure of import/re-export/necessaery postwork by C.Roland:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=183742

There are several occasions where this could have happened (+ i am not using Blender) so i can not tell you exactly. You could start with just importing / exporting back a unchanged original LH to see if you toolchain is correct.

If your tools work properly, you brocken something wile editing.

Just in case you missed them so far:
Ekmeks LH tutorial: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=267233
Bernies notes on assigning VW: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=252568

 

[Panopticon]

Thanks - there is a problem with the tools. I'll have to find the right configuration. I looked through the guides but they're pretty old so they might not deal with this problem.

 

[Refar]

The guides will not help you figuring out a problem with a new version of Blender of Plugin, true.

But the general information and the workflow outlined there is still up to date, and more or less the only way known to work. So you can back to these, once you got the tools to work. Or you could try to download a older version of Blender/Plugin to have exactly the same tools as described there.

 

[Panopticon]

I downloaded Ekmek's version of Blender and the scripts - this is now working on an initial render of an unmodified leaderhead. Time to move some polygons and see what happens...

 

[Panopticon]

Editing is now A-OK. Thanks a lot.

 

[Ekmek]

also you may not have rigged some of the body parts correctly or not at all which makes them static or stretch weird.

post some screenshots or your blend files and we can take a look!

 

[Panopticon]

My first leaderhead! There's still more that can be done though - e.g. shrinking the area where the moustache would be. Much of the modding was done already but I can't find the original artist. I have found that hair is the most difficult part to modify.

 

[Refar]

Can see a lot of Roosewelt still, but your changes to the Nose and hair-line are well done.

Overall quite good for the first try

You should open a new thread for him in Graphics Modpacks, where the other LH's get released, once you feel he's ready.

 

[Ekmek]

is the hair hard part on the model or the texture. if its model stuff try transforms, edit mode moving the dots, or even swapping fo someone else's hair

 

[MadmanOfALeader]

You should make his face rounder.

 

[Panopticon]

You should make his face rounder.

I did... just haven't updated the screenshot.