I have had a go at making a toddler animation rig for making poses in milkshape, and I think that I have done the process correctly as described in the tutorial. Although the rig file works, I have two problems; both pretty major.

Firstly, I couldn't find any facial meshes to import, so the rig is faceless. It still seems to work as a general rig but would obviously be better with a face!
Secondly, the blue skeleton in milkshape is the child one and so is way too large. This impacts on the first issue; I could take an educated guess at moving lips, eyes etc from what i've picked up doing normal poses if the skeleton was the correct size. So my questions are, is it possible to import facial features for a toddler into the original mesh? And can you make the blue skeleton smaller or is there somewhere to import a smaller one? And if yes is the answer to either, what vital step/s have I missed out?!
thanks for any help

Last edited by alfiemoon : 26th Apr 2012 at 08:09 PM.

It should be possible export all the textures needed for your mesh. The people who have the most experience with that seem to be over in the CAS parts area more than in meshing.

Afaik the only people who have successfully created rigs for MS are Wes and Mesher. Neither has posted here in awhile but maybe if no one answers you could try PM'ing.

There is a working toddler rig available for Blender that works with the CLIPTool. The tool has a more streamlined work process and comes with a full set of textured rigs (adults, child, and toddler). If all you're interested in is making toddler poses it would prolly be worth giving that a look rather than struggling with the MS rig. I wrote a start to finish tutorial on how to make a toddler pose using that tool for people who are new to Blender which is pretty easy. The same directions will work for adult and child poses too. Tbh, Blender is far easier to use for making poses and animations with.

The tool is here:

http://dino.drealm.info/den/denforu...php?topic=862.0

and the tutorial is here:

http://dino.drealm.info/den/denforu...php?topic=916.0

Thanks for the reply Orangemittens; I suppose I was trying to stay with what I know but having read your tutorial I think using blender is the way to go with this. One day, someone who knows what they're doing will share a toddler rig to use in milkshape but by then, I might prefer blender anyway! thanks again

Np Blender is a better tool and can do a lot more for you. Another example is that with the new CLIPTool and Blender you can bring in two rigs to make a couple's pose more easily since you can work on posing both rigs at the same time. I just posted a tutorial on that here:

http://dino.drealm.info/den/denforu...x.php?topic=920

MS doesn't have the power to bring in more than one rig with joints at a time so it isn't gonna be able to do this. Blender isn't only the way to go for toddler poses...it's really the way to go for anything having to do with poses/animation.

I've been playing with blender for hours since your first reply and how awesome is it for poses?! I just wish I had tried it months ago; and to be able to bring in two rigs together (the majority of my poses are two, three or more people as I only use them to illustrate my non-simming stories) will be even better. I have discovered the scroll wheel on my mouse has been invaluable. To be able to select a joint in say front view, scroll wheel and swivel the mouse to change the view to side, rotate or move the joint, then swivel to top, rotate or move the same joint....... etc. For anyone using milkshape who is unsure, try blender, at least for poses.

Thanks for this tutorial on bringing in a second rig orangemittens, i'll download it now.