Maya - Rigging character with separate body parts
polycounter lvl 9
Hi there,
I suck at Rigging so I've been doing a lot of tutorials to try and learn and get used it it. Recently, I branched off for a bit to try and make a model to practice what I had learned and wondered how to 1) make a character stylized character with clothing and hair (since I haven't done quite done that before with a properly rigged character) and 2) rig a model with multiple unmerged body parts as a challenge (since I've noticed a lot of game models I've looked at seem to work like that).
(Note: I have included pictures below)
I've been trying to rig the character but I've run into some issues on my latter goal. My model is made up from separate meshes, the head, the hair (which I will parent to something later), left arm, right arm, shorts, left leg, and right leg. I can select the specific joints I want to affect each part as I bind them, however, their border edges do not stick to the model and break off, which I kind of expected, however adding influence to, say, the chest bone for the root of the arm mesh doesn't do anything and can make it worse. Same thing goes for the leg. I've tried point and parent constraining the edges/verticies there to the bone, but that makes it even worse. I'm a bit wary of binding the rest of the mesh until I can find a solution.
How do I rig a model with multiple parts and tie down those edges/verticies so that they stay where I need them to?
I suck at Rigging so I've been doing a lot of tutorials to try and learn and get used it it. Recently, I branched off for a bit to try and make a model to practice what I had learned and wondered how to 1) make a character stylized character with clothing and hair (since I haven't done quite done that before with a properly rigged character) and 2) rig a model with multiple unmerged body parts as a challenge (since I've noticed a lot of game models I've looked at seem to work like that).
(Note: I have included pictures below)
I've been trying to rig the character but I've run into some issues on my latter goal. My model is made up from separate meshes, the head, the hair (which I will parent to something later), left arm, right arm, shorts, left leg, and right leg. I can select the specific joints I want to affect each part as I bind them, however, their border edges do not stick to the model and break off, which I kind of expected, however adding influence to, say, the chest bone for the root of the arm mesh doesn't do anything and can make it worse. Same thing goes for the leg. I've tried point and parent constraining the edges/verticies there to the bone, but that makes it even worse. I'm a bit wary of binding the rest of the mesh until I can find a solution.
How do I rig a model with multiple parts and tie down those edges/verticies so that they stay where I need them to?
Replies
You will need to paint skin weights before you see a solution to this problem. There's no need for additional constraints. You just need to make sure that, for example, the weights on the bottom of the shorts are almost the same as the weights at the top of the leg. When the skin weights match, they will both be affected by the joints in the same way.
Thanks for the input, I played around with the influences and figured out how to do get the arm and leg to stay in place. Now I have another issue. I've got the arm and leg working on the left side, now the right side is the problem. I don't know how to make it the same on the right side short of painting the weights on the other side again, a horrible, inaccurate and inefficient idea. I thought that the copy skin weights tool would work, though it doesn't. In fact, the copy skin weights completely kills the autoskinning settings on the right arm and leg when I try to copy it from the left arm, as seen in the attached image. Since it's not a single mesh, I know I can't mirror skin weights on it either. I'm not exactly sure what do do in this situation.
Any idea how I can copy the skin weights over successfully?
Just tried that, it doesn't work. In fact, when I did that and tried to check the influences the right arm with the paint skin weights tool, even if I separate it after the fact, it no longer registers any influences from the right arm, although it still moves the same as before with its own bones with no change in the problem.
For skinning I'd recommend starting at the root and working your way down. So for your arms I'd start with the left clavicle, just paint 1 on the whole shoulder area. Then go to the shoulder and make shoulder look good, then move on down the chain. Just block out the skinning before fine tuning every vert.
Ah, I'll give this a shot, but one question first; is there a way for me to save or copy the skin weights settings from my current left arm and leg so that I can just save time by pasting it after I finish the process you're describing? That would be useful to know going forward.
Do the steps I mentioned above, then once it's skinned you can selected your arm you made progress on and then the new one that is combined. Then go to skin/edit smooth skin/copy skin weights.
Edit: Then you could do skin/edit smooth skin/mirror weights.
One last question. It seems over the course of this rigging mess, I've accumlated quite a few redundances in my outliner without realizing it. It's not that important, but I was hoping to get rid of them. However, when I mass delete all of them, much like in the picture below, Maya will ALWAYS crash. If I try to do it individually, random verticies or even entire meshes will warp or be deleted entirely. I'm not sure what to do about this. I'm not even sure how they were all created in the first place since I certainly didn't add most them intentionally while modeling.
Any clue what the issue is here?
Also, if your models are rigged, use delete Non Deformer History to clear out modeling-related history but keep the rigging. Most of the time you'll want to clear history before you start that process anyway.