In Maya, how can I make specific vertices, faces, or edges lock in place so they can't move?
I have a furred tail GEO for a character, but when I manipulate the joints for animation, it moves the base away from the model. So ideally, I'd like to lock the perimeter of the base in place so that it will not move regardless of what else moves around it.
Although, now upon having said that aloud, I realize the error in that logic. Since obviously I need it to move with the character model itself.
So any advice would be appreciated.
Xgen Fur BTW. It's been a bit of a headache rigging this if I'm being honest. The IK spline handles seem to move the tail in unnatural ways. Apart from the primary issue with the base, just attempting to rotate the handles, or even joints, only seems to rotate individual hairs, rather than that portion of the tail. Again, any help would be appreciated.
Replies
You answered it yourself: Skin the base of the tail to the same bone as the area it should stick to (pelvis bone?)
I'm no skinning expert and don't know much about xgen, that said, in some cases either skinning a proxy mesh and transferring the skin weights to complex geometry or transferring weights of base mesh to geometry attached to it reduces headaches for me.
That could likely fix the base movement, but theoretically though, it should move normally on it's own. For example, if it were just a furry tentacle, it would have no base to connect to (though obviously that would be weird and unlikely, but just as a hypothetical case).
I get what you're saying about the skin weights though.
"don't know much about xgen"
Sadly it seems the only people that do are the extreme professionals that don't talk to normal people without getting paid to do so.. Seriously.. In the years I've been goin over this, I haven't talked to a single person that's had more than a rudimentary understanding of Xgen.. As in, they might barely know more than I do, but never know more than a single fix for any of my issues, and that fix never works on my issues, since Xgen is apparently such a complex beast..
Sorry for the rant, thx for the input. Just frustrating that there always seems to be a big fat paywall to anything good in this world..