I am currently having trouble with selecting certain vertices with the envelope modifier. I am attempting the tutorial found here - http://www.spoono.com/3ds/tutorials/tutorial.php?id=7 All goes well until step 15. At this point, when I am adjusting the handles on the envelope, I have a problem. The vertices on the front part of the knee are simply unselectable. I have even tried making the envelopes so large that it covers the ENTIRE leg. No matter what I do, I can not find a way to select these vertices, therefore the skinning is unsuccessful. Am I doing something wrong? I have done the tutorial over a few times now and still have the same problem. Is this information too outdated? Any help would be appreciated please!

Make sure both envelopes (calf and thigh) are set correctly. Also make sure you don't have any other strange envelopes (such as from the foot). If all your envelopes look correct and you still have this problem, please post a screenshot or two so we can better debug it.

Okay I have some images so I could show you the problem.


Here is the base model of the leg with the bones I created for it, before editing the envelopes.
http://img412.imageshack.us/my.php?image=leg1vq0.png


Here I moved it a bit, so you could see the vertices that I am trying to cover when I edit the envelope...
http://img509.imageshack.us/my.php?image=leg2ku1.png

Here, the ONLY bone I changed the envelope for was the thigh. I extended the envelope to a very large size so that it should be covering most of the leg to display the problem...
http://img412.imageshack.us/my.php?image=leg3hq3.png

For some reason it completely ignores the vertices in question. Does anyone have any idea of what the problem could be?

(Edit: Sorry, I could not get the images to work properly on here so I had to link them.)

There are two envelopes. The darker red is the 'end' of the influence, on the outside. The lighter red is the beginning of the fading of the influence, so everything inside this should be almost 1 weighted to the bone. Right now you have the inner evelope extremely small, and the calf inner evelopes is probably encompassing those verts. Which means, no matter how large you make the thigh outer envelope, won't matter- adjust the inner envelopes as well. The built-in 3dsmax tutorials cover most of this well, I'd suggest going through them. And then once you can use Skin Envelopes, you'll realize you may as well just assign vert weights yourself :)