Yep So it is a
long waste of time if your going to redo all the existing Avatar motions just to add the additional bones to the Avatar and animation time frames.
But this is how I applied the new bones and embedded them to existing animations
I first used the 64x Rose Tool plugin to import the male.zmd skeleton (in 3dsMax 2010) ..then model meshes.
But no animation...then modify by adding new bones to skeleton. Then export with Rose Tool and save as Male2.zmd.
Then created new scene..Imported original male.zmd skeleton then model meshes and animation.
This is
important. If you try to use your modified skeleton..you will get a bone mismatch error and fail to load animation.
After all assets are imported to scene you then open Rose Tool and import the modified skeleton Male2.zmd.
Now in the scene there are two skeletons. Open the Hierarchy editor and delete all the duplicated bones from the modified skeleton (when you load your modified skeleton the import tool will ask to rename duplicate bones, choose yes to rename). I then took the newly added bones and connected them to Original male skeleton's appropriate connecting bone in this case "b1_neck".
Now to add the frame times to include triangles for the new bones I had to actually Import a wing model mesh. Select the imported wing/model and add a skin modifier. Then assign the new bones to the wing mesh..don't forget to place the wing in appropriate position.
Now you can render scene or skip render seems to export new Frame times to the newly re-written .zmo (May have to double check by opening the .zmo in a .smd format). So once the wing mesh is added and working in scene. You can export the skeleton, mesh, and animation.
But this process is so long and drawn out..It is obscene the effort to rewrite every Avatar animation. But worthwhile for Modding NPC mob models and existing animations
After exporting convert zmd and zmo's to .smd to review the skeleton and times. Each time refers to a single key frame and corresponding bone coordinates. So if your animation has 30 frames..then then you should see 30 different time frames for each skeleton bone/to/.zms mesh.
This is interesting and not such a waste of time if we would like to change NPC's or rather Monster skeletons and modify their Motion files to create new Mob animations, ( ie: add a new monster model, but weight an already existing mobs motion files to it ! ) This isn't an exhausting effort since they basically only have 5-10 motion files applied in the .chr table file. So if you are interested in the future to create or modify existing NPC zmo motion files..
This is a workable process.