Adjusting Hands to Default Skeleton

[Jasumi]

Greetings, I come again with another issue.

I've been trying to create "sexy hands" for male and female sims.


This is the male version:
http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/9838/skeletonh.png

You'll notice that the skeleton on the new hands do not match up as nicely on the Maxis hands. Thus, they don't animate perfectly.

I have two questions:

1) Can I manually edit the skeleton? I want to move the digits of the skeleton around so that they match up with the new mesh. But would doing so be a bad idea?

2) Is there a better way to go about doing this?


Thanks in advance,

--Jasumi

[HystericalParoxysm]

You can't move the joints, no. I think you need to focus on moving your hand/finger parts to match the skeleton, not the other way around.

[Jasumi]

I hoping you wouldn't say that lol

Back to meshing the hands, I go...

[CatOfEvilGenius]

The hands do look much prettier than Maxis, but they also look much smaller. I can see how this would make many hand animations not look right in game, especially when holding objects, or touching other sims. I suggest scaling the hands up.

I have an observation, not related to your original question. These hands look very detailed, nails, knuckles, joints, etc. Very lovely, but I'm guessing quite high poly. Most of the time, the camera is zoomed out so much that we wouldn't see this lovely detail anyway, so is the high poly count worth it? Are these hands meant for story tellers and movie makers, for closeup shots?

[Jasumi]

HP, thanks for your advice. You pretty-much confirmed what I felt I had to do. I've now got them texturing correctly and animating fully-functional as well. A bit un-proportional, but a good sacrifice.

http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/723/hands2.png


CoEG , those are good points.

The polycount is 800. A bit high, yes.

But you were correct when you mentioned story-telling and movie-making, as these hands would look much better in close-ups. That was my original motive. But if you have any advice about lowering the polycount, I would appreciate it.

[CatOfEvilGenius]

You could try a poly decimation tool that lets you specify a feature angle, so you reduce polys in flat areas, but keep detail like nail ridges. I wouldn't recommend the one in MilkShape, unless you've got nothing else.

[Jasumi]

You could try a poly decimation tool that lets you specify a feature angle, so you reduce polys in flat areas, but keep detail like nail ridges. I wouldn't recommend the one in MilkShape, unless you've got nothing else.

I see. I know of one for Zbrush, do you know of a tool Independent of a specific program?