ANIMATORS out there, pleeease help!

Dazz3r

OK, I'm working on an indy project, needing to skin a character to a biped rig, in max. This is like my fourth attempt, I've watched god knows how many tutorials, particularly those on digital tutors. The thing I'm really struggling with is weighting round the shoulder. If you look at the majority of tutorials out there, they grab a pipe, and set of fingers or something simple, add some bones, make it bend,...thats fine, I can do that and I understand it, but how on earth do do you do a shoulder??

It's driving me crazy lol, I'm not an animator, but its down to me, if I dont do it, it doesnt get done, please can someone, point me in the right direction, here are some screens of my weighting and the deformation of the mesh so far....

Cheers guys

Ruz

you should use the paint weights( and paint blend weights) to smooth out awkward bits. it's a bit a fiddly at first, but definitely useable.
I generally use a couple of twist joints in the upper arm also which really helps the deformation.

Mrfred

Yeah dont use the enveloppem the system, can we see a picture with the bone emplacement as well ?

Dubzski

This area and weighting the thigh/lower back area are the hardest to get right so don't give up hope .
To start off with nobody's arm bends that way! If you want to get your arm in that position you need to move your shoulder, which is controlled by the clavicle bone.

Hm its pretty tricky to tell what going on i'd be happy to have a look at it in 3Ds Max if you want and then give you some concrete pointers.

HalfCrazy

Yeah I agree with Dubzski, you just need to find a good balance of weights between the shoulder clavicle bone and the upper arm bone. I’ve always found skinning that part a nightmare but like Ruz said if you can get the hang of painting weights that will help out a lot.

Dazz3r

So try using the actual painting weights tool, rather than selecting verts and assigning weights? Will look up some tutorials specific to that then.

Thanks guys, wish there was an easy method, a dDo for skinning lol. I thought I'd still post some screens of my bone layout within the mesh (like you guys suggested), see if that is perhaps causing some difficulties.

jfeez

Be careful with where you pose the character when skinning, try getting just your arm back into that position dont try to skin to impossible poses otherwise you will be bashing your head against the desk for days. For that pose you need some clavicle rotation and less arm rotation. I couldnt see any twist links in the biped either from your screens, as other people have said you should have one or two in the upper arm to get the twisting right which will help with that pose. Its also common practise, especially in the shoulders to use bones to hold form. I normally have one in the pectoral and one in the scapula, you then power their movement using reaction manager, or if you can script their are other ways have fun rigging is great

katana

I used to have major issues with skinning, then i realized it was more a color Painting exercise than a mathematical one...Paint weights at a very low setting, blend weights requires a stronger setting to see any difference.

Check on Show colored faces
Check on Show No envelopes

to see what I mean.

monster

I've been using Autoweight with much success. It's not really "auto weighting", but it lets you set clusters of polygons that will follow a bone, then it does auto blending between all the clusters.

http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/autoweight-automatic-skinning-tool-for-3ds-max


I've fixed several bugs and heavily modified the UI to suit myself better. I don't think I'm at liberty to share my copy though.

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BTW, I just wanted to add... There is no magic bullet for skinning. It just takes time and practice. I fix half of my skinning problems by restricting the animation poses (or doing a motion very quickly).
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