will there be a jedi academy skeleton released that can be opened with the prior xsi importer released for 3dsmax....?

everytime i try to open the one that came with the modeling tools max gives me an error message about level 3 revision not being supported or just crashes alotgether.

if anyone knows how to get around this, or if there is a modeling tutorila specifically for jedi academy, feel free to share it with those of us still lost in the dark....

and i appreciated the tutorial posted by psykosith, it helped me understand alot of what was going on....but i need a skeleton fo JA, and i would like at least a modest revision of the previously mentioned JO tutorial for JA. so if anyone knows if either of these can be found anywhere, or may soon to be released, i would appreciate the info.....

1.You do not need a new skeleton

In case you absolutely need it, Corto has an updated skeleton @ http://www.cortocg.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=20) The skeleton wont show up as bone objects...but should work fine. The difference is that the new skeleton has two extra bones for the Twilek.

2.Everything you learned about JO applies to JA...its the same process.

3.To compile the OLD skeleton with the new .GLA you just have to delete a few extra bones (mainly toes and fingers) and rename 1 bone. I can write an update for that.

4.If you want to read the new XSI from JA, you have to get the updated XSI plugin (again thanx to Corto http://www.softimage.com/download/xsi/converters/max/default.htm)

hey, thanks alot for all the help.

the only reason i was wanting the new skeleton, was due to problems viewing things with modview. you know, this skeleton has this many bones and needs recompiling error.

i appreciate all the help though. thanks.

No problem...

If you have two drives on your PC, you can setup both modviews...i use the old one on my c: and the other on the d:

You can also change the .GLA whenever you want to load a JO model.

Just rename the JA GLA and move the "JO" in there, switch back when you want to load JA models...if that makes any sense :D

yeah, i understand what you mean.....

didn't think to do that. bought a system about 6 months ago just for doing this sort of stuff, so i do have two hard drives. and the new modview will open JO models correctly as long as the correct humanois.gla is there.

it's just that most of the work i'm doing is for JA. so even though i've downloaded and extracted some stuff from JO as sources, and the game will load JO models and compile them correctly, it's just a pain in the butt not be able to view your woprk outside the game.

couple of more questions though, i noticed corto's JA skeleton was weighted and tagged. that is beneficial i imagine, but if the meshes you are working with are tagged as well, do those interfere. second, he said it was missing a couple of bones other than the ones taken out for JA that he said he had not figured out a use for.....will that cause problems.

i did download the new XSI importer, thanks for the link. so i should be able to import the new JA skeleton released with the modeling tools. so what are the benefits to a tagged weighted skeleton as opposed to the one that came with the modeling tools?

and there was also a humanoid.bonecap file that came with the modeling tools, any ideas what that is for? as i said i am new to this. i have done skins for quite some time, but as i said before, eventually that has its limitations. so bear with me if these are silly questions.

I'll try my best to answer your questions...

Corto's skeleton has the tags weighted to their corresponding bone, so no need to re-use other tags...you can also weight them yourself, but he did it to help you save some time.

I always work with an already tagged skeleton, because that's an extra step i dont want to re-do everytime! Thats a pretty big benefit if you ask me ;).

I remember he removed the tail bones from one of his skeletons...they are not needed, those were used for the twilek female "tentacles".

I dont think there's an official JA skeleton released by raven. Like i said, you can use the same skeleton used for JO, if you want to make it a JA only model...see how below:

humanoid bonecap:...looks like the bones that you need to "remove" if you want to make a JO model fully compatible with JA (no messed up taunts).

If i were you, i'd focus on working with JO's skeleton, if you can make a character for JO, there's very little work needed to make it fully JA compatible.

so the skeleton that came with the JA modeling tools is a JO skeleton?

because the tools said they came with meshes for the characters and skeletal information. i was assuming that is what the root.xsi file in the humanoid folder that came with the modeling tools was. the JA skeleton. i could be wrong, but i wouldn't think they would re-release the JO skeleton with the JA tools.

check it out for yourself when you get the chance, because the new modeling tools came with a skeleton(or so i thought) and get back with me when you find something out.

three quick (possibly stupid ) questions....

first, say you import a model in glm format. it is not being imported with the skeleton obviously. but the tags are still there. do the tags imported with the meshes still need to be there, or are they just something to get rid of.

second, the bonecap file you said was a file that dealt with the removing of JO bones from the skeleton. how exactly does the file work, what exactly does it do, and how does one use a file with the extension .bonecap?

is there a way to recompile a model's skeleton other than it being loaded into the game. (or removing the bones yourself....if this is the only way feel like making alist of what to remove :)) because i do alot of skinning work and i keep my projects from the two games separate. as i have not really done any player modeling as of yet, this isn't an issue. but i like to keep my projects for the games separate, and i would like to be able to view my skins quickly with modview. (and if the two tailbones are absent, will this cause an error in modview....as i have gotten a this model has 72 bones, while it should have 53, it needs to be recompiled error before when accidentally placing a JO model i had been working on in my JA folder. so will it give me an error if the skeleton is minus two bones?)

1.GLM import ---> Yes you get rid of the tags (personnaly, that's what i'd do!)

2.The bonecap file doesnt do anything as far as i know, just ignore it.

3.There is no way to quickly recompile a model if you dont have the ORIGINAL max file.

4.You wont see any tail bone errors, the reason is simple: in reality, you dont have to add every bone to the mesh for the GLA/GLM to work correctly. Of course there are exceptions...like i said, stick to the JO method and simply alter the skeleton when you want a "JA only" player model.

Here's a link of the bones you need to remove from the skin modifier stack (or simply delete them from the skeleton).

http://www3.sympatico.ca/psykopat/tutorials/carcassnew.jpg)

The reason you have to get rid of those bones, is that the .GLA file doesnt know what to do with these extra bones (there are no animations for them...so theyre not needed anymore)

hey, thanks for all the links and all the help.....after perusing both yopur tutorials and gathering the necessary files i think i'm finally ready to begin giving this a try.

thanks again.

Glad i could help :) if you have anymore questions, dont hesitate to ask.

Hey thanks for the info in this thread---as soon as I get past my present error, this will be helpful.