Exporting a skinned tesselated SMD

[B.J.]

Greetings. Recently I've came up to a problem which still remains unsolved to me. I'm trying to export a skinned tesselated SMD with the tesselation modifier on top of the stack. The reason I'm doing this is to keep the original rig un-touched. However, if I export it like this, it won't compile and the errors I get are: "WARNING: too few bones/vert (0) : it has no bones!" and importing it back in 3Ds Max gives this:
[img]https://puu.sh/wBE5Z/73a8114131.png[/img]
If I put the skin modifier on top of the stack though, it'll export fine but the rig will be screwed up. Is there a workaround to keep the mesh tesselated without having to re-rig and to have it compile properly? Thank you in advance.

[Game Zombie]

You can copy the mesh, tessellate the copy, and use skin wrap to kind of transfer the rigging.

[B.J.]

[QUOTE=Game Zombie;52432583]You can copy the mesh, tessellate the copy, and use skin wrap to kind of transfer the rigging.[/QUOTE]

Adding a tesselation modifier to an unique copy manages to crash 3Ds Max so I'm completely lost here.

[Gmod4ever]

[QUOTE=B.J.;52432630]Adding a tesselation modifier to an unique copy manages to crash 3Ds Max so I'm completely lost here.[/QUOTE]

Starting [b]without[/b] your tessellation applied:

1.) Take your original mesh, call it ORIGINAL.
2.) Create a total copy (not an instance or whatever the third option is) of ORIGINAL. Call this copy DUPLICATE.
3.) Apply a Tessellate on the top of the stack to ORIGINAL. Do whatever you need to do to get the tessellation you want.
4.) Right-click your Tessellate, and choose to Collapse the stack. You now have an Editable X with no modifiers, including no Skin.
5.) With ORIGINAL selected, apply a Skin Wrap. Change to Face Deformation, use 1.0/5.0/Weight All Points. Click "Add" and target DUPLICATE.
6.) Once the Skinwrap is finished, press Convert to Skin on your Skinwrap. This creates a new Skin, and disables the Skinwrap. You can now delete the Skinwrap.

[B.J.]

[QUOTE=Gmod4ever;52432958]Starting [b]without[/b] your tessellation applied:

1.) Take your original mesh, call it ORIGINAL.
2.) Create a total copy (not an instance or whatever the third option is) of ORIGINAL. Call this copy DUPLICATE.
3.) Apply a Tessellate on the top of the stack to ORIGINAL. Do whatever you need to do to get the tessellation you want.
4.) Right-click your Tessellate, and choose to Collapse the stack. You now have an Editable X with no modifiers, including no Skin.
5.) With ORIGINAL selected, apply a Skin Wrap. Change to Face Deformation, use 1.0/5.0/Weight All Points. Click "Add" and target DUPLICATE.
6.) Once the Skinwrap is finished, press Convert to Skin on your Skinwrap. This creates a new Skin, and disables the Skinwrap. You can now delete the Skinwrap.[/QUOTE]

That did the trick, my appreciations!