Skinning a Biped

Anybody know how to skin a biped??? Like taking a picture of a person and the applying and wrapping that texture around a biped. Even if we have create the texture like you would for Quake or any similar game, that would be easier then any other approach that I can think of. Any ideas would be helpful, thanks!

Kris Zibert
Team 16
The Baxter Bomb Squad
“We’re Back Baby!”

you probably mean skinning the mesh. biped is the bone system. in 3d that is.

I’d have to advise against taking a picture and placing it on a model. First, it looks terrible cause the resolution is either not high enough, or the photo is saturated. Second, it looks very awkward and stretched. A front view picture would not account for curves on a human body.

I suggest that you learn how to skin with Photoshop, or apply a basic procedural skin, there are plenty of good ones. That’s just my 2 cents, be free to test.

There are quite a few ways to do it, it mostly just depends on what you consider easier to do. One way is discussed here:
http://lightning.prohosting.com/~veras/facetx.htm
It basically shows you a guess-and-check method of working around it. A better way I have found is using a texture map unwrapper. Basically it takes a 3D object and tears it down to a 2D view making texturing as easy as “here will be the nose” etc. You can find a plug-in for that and much more here:
http://www.dreamsandmagic.com/p_max.htm
There are a couple of different ones. I used the “unwrapper” and it seems easy to use.
The last way is just to go out and buy a program like BodyPaint. I am currently using this method as it is the easiest to me. It takes your 3-d object and sets it up as a virtual canvas while you “paint” onto it. Then you just save your texture and apply it in Max. Though this is the easiest method, it is also the only one that costs money.
Hope this has been of some help.