Armor Skinning - Conan Exiles

Skin Modifier Set-Up

• (If you haven’t done this already during modelling stage) Make a copy of the SK_human_male_outfitbase.max or SK_human_female_outfitbase.max and name it
  SK_[armorset]_[gender]

  • The outfitbase files can be found in Perforce under
    ConanSandbox → Assets → Content → Characters → humans → source

• Import low-poly assets.

• Select an asset and add a Skin Wrap Modifier

  • Under Parameters press Add and select SK_male_body_full in male version or SK_human_female_assembled in female version

  • Deformation Engine should be set to Vertex Deformation

  • [X] Weight All Points should be ticked ON

  • Press Convert To Skin

• In the Skin modifier, scroll down to Advanced Parameters
  → Bone Affect Limit: should be set to 4

• Scroll back and forth in the animation slider at the bottom to see how the asset looks in motion. Turn on the bade body mesh you skinned to and make sure that the armor asset does not move far away from the body. If it does you need to edit bone weights.

Edit Bone Weights to Finalize Skinning

• Under Parameters in the Skin modifier:

  • Press Edit Envelopes

  • Select → make sure [X[ Vertices is ticked ON

• Scroll down to Weight Properties

  • Open the Weight Tool by pressing the Wrench Symbol 🔧

  • Open the Painter Options by pressing the …

  • Activate Paint Weights

    • Paint Blend Weight is automatically turned on, if you want to paint weight you need to turn it off, but if you just want to make a smooth transition keep it on.

• Press on a vertex or bone in the model, and the Bone Weights will visually appear on the model as a Red-Yellow-Blue-Grey gradient, Red being 1 (100%) weighted to the selected bone. Orange and Yellow tones, being around 0.9 and 0.2 (90%-20%) weighted to the bone. Blue being > 0.25 (25%) weighted to that bone. And grey being 0 (0%) weighted to that bone.

  • Most of the time you want it to be a smooth transition between these colors to avoid any weird deformation. The exception being if a part of the armor should behave like a hard material and have less deformation than the area surrounding it.

  • Example of smooth Transitioning

    

  • Example with a metal Brooch that should not deform, so the weights are the exact same on the entire brooch, while the underlying cloth has a smooth transition.

    

• Skirts can be skinned directly to the SK_male_skirtbase and SK_female_skirtbase that can be found in the SK_human_male_outfitbase.max and SK_human_female_outfitbase.max files. It is important that the topology flow of your asset matches as closely up to the skirtbase as possible. Keep in mind that it doesn’t have to match completely and it can be extended further away from the body and baseskirt without any issue.