"Function Bone" Knowledge Compendium

[digiholic]

All right, with a lot of people trying their own models, and I, myself, having problems with this, I've decided to make a list of all "Function Bones" (as opposed to "Animation Bones") which are vital to making a character function properly in Brawl. I guess this will just be people asking questions about bone-related issues and if anyone can answer them, post and I'll update this front page.

EDITING BONE INDEXES:
This is a valuable skill to learn in model swapping. Some characters have perfect bones for some function, but the wrong Index. Remember, the game looks at the index for function, the name for animation. So you could have any index bone named "TransN," but it would just animate your character. What you need is one with the same index as the TransN of the character you are replacing.

To change the bone index of your character, first download Fortwaffles' tool found here.
Export the model of your character as "model.mdl0" and put it in the same directory as the bone hierarchy editor. Run the program. It will prompt you for the mdl0 offset and the total number of bones, enter them. The program will show the bone number, then the bone index below it (if you haven't edited this, it should be one less than the number) and a bunch of other numbers that, while useful in other aspects, are not necessary right now.

Go to the boneIndex that you want to change, and click edit next to it. Enter the new number. Now, I'm not sure what happens if you have two bones of the same index, but it can't be good. Change the bone that was originally the new index to the one you just got rid of. After tweaking the bones you need to, click done at the bottom and it will save your model (closing any other way does not save the model)

Congratulations! That's all there is to it!

All known function bones and their functions
(Please contribute knowledge, I don't know all of these, but I'm sure most of you do)

TopN: The root bone of everything. Always index 0. Usually, you won't need to edit anything for this, since it's almost 100% likely that your model will have a bone of index 0 as the root of everything as well.
TransN: Used in movement. This one is usually soon after TopN, but not always right after. To find a proper replacement, edit the translations of some of the root bones of the animation bones to find one that moves the entire model. That should be your TransN.
XRotN: Not sure what it really does, but probably has something to do with X rotation.
YRotN: See above, replace X with Y
HipN: From the looks of things, it just seems to be a root bone for the animation bones.
ThrowN: This bone defines how the character is thrown, and how it throws other characters. Problems in this bone cause a game crash when the character grabs or is grabbed. I haven't found a suitable fix for this one, yet.
HaveN: The bone that items and other grabbable items are attached to. I haven't really tried to fix this one yet, it's a rather low priority.

List of common bone-related issues and their solutions

Help! My character doesn't move! He can only dash, but when he tries to run, he stands still!
This is a TransN problem. Find a suitable TransN bone on your new model, and set it's index to the index of the TransN of the original character.

I've edited the TransN, and my character moves now, but he moves oddly. He goes forward, moving past the spot he should be in, and blinks back. It's like his "anchor" position is moving and he keeps warping back to it.
No solution yet.

Whenever my character is grabbed, the game crashes!
This is a ThrowN problem.

Whenever my character grabs a ledge, he warps across the screen, sometimes instantly dying!
No solution yet.

More questions to come. Feel free to ask them.