Now we ne3ed to apply a Physique modifier to your model in order to link your skeleton to your mesh.

Select your model (Unhide it all first if you still have bits hidden) and pulldown the modifier list to select Physique. Once done, use the Attach to Node button ( ) and click on the root bone of your skeleton to link up the two. In the window that comes up select RIGID in the Vertex link Assignment rollout.

Then choose from the pulldown menu how many links you want to be used as blending. DO NOT CHOOSE MORE THAN 3 LINKS as Unreal cannot use more than this. I doubt you would really need that many anyway, I rarely need more than 2. Initially, as I assign vertices manually I apply the No Blending option as it is cleaner to use when sorting through the vertices as you go along, personal choice though.

2 Links and 3 Links simply mean that multiple bones affect vertices at once. Which is best for blending joints especially when using the Envelope method to modify vertex assignment. So go for that and you'll probably have less to do on the whole :)

You can have a quick play, even from here, to see your model in action. Move some joints around. Depending on how well lined up your model is it would probably be a good fit.

And now we get to the fun bit...NOT!

Personally I prefer the manual vertex assignment...half the time you need to anyway to some extent so I just get into it from the onset. Many use envelopes and tweak them to suit their model. Feel free to use either.

I always toend to work from the ground up. So I select the model and select the Vertex Sub-selection from the Physique modifier to edit the vertiex assignments. In the modifier panel you have a lot of buttons. I will explain each here and their uses. Hopefully that will be enough to get you moving.

Vertex - Link Assignment ( Deformable, Rigid, Root Vertices) :
These three plus symbols are what you use when assigning vertices to bones. Root vertices stay where they are (do not move and stick to the root mesh position), Rigid vertices stick to the link bone and deformable vertices are more the 'flexing' type that follow the deformation spline...or 'the yellow lined thing in the middle of it all'.

Blending between links pulldown :
Select these in order to have your blending go across a number of bones, or none. An elbow joint, for example, will have vertices that are affected by both the forearm and bicep bones making it a 2 Link blend. I rarely use more than 2 links in my models, and most of it is rigid with no links. However there has been occasions on more complex models that I have needed 3 links.

Select :
Having this button on allows you to select the vertices you are about to apply attributes to (assignments etc)

Select by Link :
Having this button selected allows you to select all the vertices that are applied to a particular link, rather than by it's vertices.

Assign to Link :
Once you have you vertices selected that you want to apply to a link, or number of links (making sure you have the correct blending number selected in the pull down) you then select your link/bone or links/bones that you want to assign them to.

For example, I want the vertices around the knee to be applied to both the shin and the thigh bone. To do so I select the vertices around the knee, select the 'deformable' Vertex type, select the 'Two Link' in the blending pull down and then select the shin bone and then the thigh bone. On first selection the vertices will go bright red, on second link selection they will go darker red...this means they are using multiple links to deform to. Moving the foot will show you how these now flex between the two points.

Remove from link :
Removes selected vertices from a link you select.

Lock Assignments :
Lock Assignments is used when shifting the priority of a bones influence of a vertex. For example, you want the shin bone to influence a vertex more than the thigh bone. I will go into this more later.

I also thought after setting the vertex to hwo you want it would 'lock' the setting and wouldn't get effected if you selected it among others and changed their settings (thus making it easier to select/edit organise ) I have found that even when locked the changes you make are still applied. I use the Hide tool to get rid of vertices that I know won't need to be further tweaked, allowing the model to be easier accessed as I go along.

Unlock assignments :
Read Lock assignments...apply lateral thought, see result. If pain persists, see your doctor.

Type-In Weights :
This is where you apply the influences of locked vertices. I'll cover this in a sec.

Hide :
I use this as I go along in order to make selection of vertices easier. As a complex mesh gets pretty tricky to sort through your vertices. As you finish an area and you are happy with the results, hide them so as to not select them by mistake and ruin all your good work.

UnHide ALL :
Unhides all the vertices that you have hidden. Bet you didn't see it coming?

Initial Skeletal Pose :
While this is on the skelaeton will revert back to it's initial natural state.

As promised I will go into vertex/link influences using the Lock Assignments and Type-in Weights options.

Firstly, however I will go through the basic steps of setting up some vertices. Go to the left view port and select all the toe vertices after selecting the 'Select' Button in the physique modifier. As there are two feet, go to the front viewport and deselect one side by Alt-selecting them.

You skeleton should have yellow splines running through them..these are your skeletons links that you apply your vertices to. Select the 'Assign to Link' button and click on the corresponding foot link. Depending on what colour you had your vertex type, it will go Red or green, maybe even blue. Make sure that Green is selected and that the resulting vertices are Green.

GO to the left viewport again and deselect all but the back of the toe area as follows. I will use blending to modify the influence on these vertices as it would flex between the main foot and toe bones.

So select the Select button again, deselect the vertices as shown and then set the Vertex type to deformable, The belnding between links to 2 Links and select the Assign button. Rotate the view a little to make sure you select the right bone (sometimes it select the wrong one) and then assign the vertices to the toe and the main foot link.

After you have done that, press the Lock Assignments button and little boxes will cover the vertices. Press the Type-in Weights button and a new window will come up showing the two bones that your selected vertices are attached to and a few other bits and pieces.

For arguments sake I am going to make the influence of the toe bone around 75% while the main link influences the vertices the remainder 25%. To do so select each bone, and change the weight.

Have a play with your new creation, see how the influnces are shown as you rotate the joint? Pretty cool huh?

I have decided on further playing to make the lower vertices in the boot the same influnces, as it looks a little funny only haveing the top work to that degree. So that tweaked I get on with the process. Hopefully with this one example you can work through the rest of your model...as in essence it's all pretty much the same stuff.

Select vertices, assign vertices, tweak vertices, Hide vertices, repeat as necessary. Depending on your model..you have to repeat a lot ;)

This image is an example of influence zones depicted with the green and blue lines I have added. Green is the more deformable ares and blue is the more rigid. I have also applied the laok vertices in order to move them out of the way. Maryilyn Monroe anyone?

As you can see as the butt flexes over the joint the vertices range from a 25% to the thigh to 75% to the lowest spine...to 50% - 50% through to 75% on the thigh and 25% on the spine. Think of it as the transition of influence between bones...and you can reflect this in your vertex configuration.

If you use envelopes to do your vertex assignment, it does a lot of this for you and in a much more visual sense. But hey, I'm a control freak :)

After MUCH playing around in areas I'd rather not say, I have come to the final result I am happy with.

I had a lot of issues with the shoulder...and as much as I'd like to tell you how to fix it it, it would take considerable more pages to go through each step. All I can say to you is be sure to plan ahead and research your structure properly. In saying that I will be looking into this subject myself in order to get the shoulder right in the first attempt, rather than having to tweak heaps.

A thing I will mention is the ability for you to still edit triangle/poly structure if any problems arise with deformation. The image here shows a dotted line representing the line that was there, which tended to give odd overlapping effects on some angles of moving the arm. The solid line that I changed it to deforms a whole lot better. Thankfully I didn't need to do any further edits like this.

To tweak the model I simply selected the model, I then went into edit poly sub selection and deleted/created as needed. In my case it was simply changing the angle of how the triangles were arrayed in a square.

After that, make sure the two new polys the correct material channel, and smoothing group.

Then, apply an Unwrap UVW modifier on top of the Editable Mesh/Poly. If your changes were simple (like mine) you may not even have to edit the map, if it was a little more drastic you may need to edit the map accordingly...possibly even re-export the map and adjust the actual texture to suit.

All I want to note here is that you can still tweak the model as such, but if you start adding vertices and polys that weren't there before in some way then you are in for some more work...and potentially losing your saved vertex assignment in Physique.

You can, however, save and load the Physique data (it's in the Physique modifier panel). This may come in handy so play with that and you may get the results you need if you do have to change your model significantly.

After you are done with editing the lower layers of the modifier stack. Right mouse click and collapse the modifiers so that you only have your Editable Mesh/Poly and Physique. This is not compulsory, but I just find it a lot neater.

There is also the need to create a bone to house the Weapon in Unreal. As we are importing the character from scratch you can name the bone whatever you like, but for uniformity I like to keep to tradition and call it Bone_weapon

It is also important to make sure the axis is facing the correct direction, otherwise your gun will be upside down, the wrong way or who knows what else. I have to say that I always get the axis wrong in Unreal due to it's odd theories of which direction is up. However this is no biggy as I can then show you some cool fan-dangle socket editing capabilities to edit the position and rotation of the pivot inside the engine itself.

Once you have created that you move the point of axis to where the gun would sit, in my case it's his right hand. Then I need to Select and Link the Bone_Weapon to the Bip01 R Hand Bone...the right hand bone basically. And that's pretty much it for the gun placement.

Just before I move on I decided to see if I could make the cloak a little easier to work with by using Inverse Kinematics...I don't know if it will succeed in the long run, but I did set it up so I'll pass on this little tidbit to you rather than you wonder what the hell the little crosses are hanging off the cloak bones.

By selecting one of the top bones of my cloak set I then went to the Animation menu | IK Solver and selected 'HI Solver'. There is a full write up of each solver in the MAX help file under IK Solvers if you are interested.

Once selected I then click on the end bone (the end cube) to act as the end bone. I had to scale up the 'terminator' to see it better (by just using the scale tool, nothing fancy...however there is the option to set the scale in the Motion Tab once you have it selected. The terminator is the cross. By moving this you move the bones from the joint the terminator resides at up until the joint you startsed at. So rather than having to move the top bone then the bottom every time you want to move the cloak, you can now just morve the terminator. This also allows for easier access to more 'fluent' animation.

I can now also scale my model by scaling the bones. For example, with my arm down it looks a little short...so I simply scaled the forearm along one axis a little to look a little better proportioned. Once again this is possibly not the best way to go about things...but it sure beats going back to square one :)

And here is the final result...in my initial concept sketch pose no less. Albeit one rendered nicely in Max with pretty lights and cameras and stuff...

He is now available to hire for weddings, parties, bar mitzvahs or any occasion to your liking apart from stripping...cos I'm afraid that the clothes are attached. *and I hear you all sigh in disappointment too...* yeah right! :)

Or in perhaps more useful terms, animating and importing into our engine :) Well, by our I mean Epic's engine and by Epic's I mean any engine you want with preference to Epic's in this particular instance. Anyway...moving right along.

I watched Stargate SG-1 tonight...you should watch it. It's good.

Next tutorial I will cover the basics of importing the textures and your character into UT2004, alongside animating one of the many, many animations needed to get this thing in game.