Rig finished, Now need to paint weights correctly

illbleed · Nov 2015

Hi,

first time doing a rig, and binding the skin to a character model i've made. My question is most importantly, how it should look like when i paint weights, so that when i move the ik handles.. the character doesnt move like a jelly fish?

Another important question, i have armor/clothes/weapons on my character. Right now i have them combined via mesh > combined. Though i have 3 different shaders and uv sets to tell them apart. What would be the correct way to attach things like floating armor pieces and clothes? when i move the rig he moves really jelly like. I've tried painting the weights, but i have a lot of clipping with the armor.

Thanks

(not sure how to properly place image but here..

[img]http://i.imgur.com/y70yvrw.png[/img] )

monster · Nov 2015

From your terminology I assume you are using Maya. The large cloth draping over the shoulder and elbow will be very difficult for you to get working. It'll need it's own bones and constraints if you don't want to babysit it while animating. I recommend making it shorter and smaller.

At work, as a tech artist, I would reject any concept that has cloth draped over joints.

As for vertex weighting. Skip the paint weights tool. Use the Component Editor to rigid weight all the verts, then use Smooth Flood to blend the weighting. This workflow is much faster and less prone to error.

And if you are using Maya 2013 or newer try out the heat map feature:

http://youtu.be/aCBx8MjEvvo

Or Geodesic Voxel Biding in Maya 2015 or newer:

http://youtu.be/ZyytEiB-1Ug

illbleed · Nov 2015

Hi Monster,

Thank you for the reply! In maya 2016, i dont have the smooth bind option shown in the video, though i tried the option box for regular bind skin and put the exact same setings as in the video.. and this is the error i get : error line 0 unable to create an offscreen open gl buffer

Edit: I tried the geodesic voxel, and i got much nicer results for the paint weights, it looks like my elbow isnt moving correctly because when i try to bend his elbow, it doesnt bend at all. so i'll try to see what i did wrong there.

illbleed · Nov 2015

so question about cloth and rigging/skinning in general, what would be the proper way to do cloth? because in games like dark souls/bloodborne, the cloth moves freely. Just curious how that works.

monster · Nov 2015

The proper way to do cloth just takes time and effort. The games you mention have large teams with dedicated technical artists.

Take Batman's cape in Arkham City:
http://m.cgw.com/Publications/CGW/2011/Volume-34-Issue-9-Dec-Jan-2012-/Mean-Streets.aspx

The in-game cape combines a mixture of elements: real-time cloth simulation driving a skeletal mesh rig; hand-keyed skeletal animation; and off-line cloth simulation, authored in 3ds Max cloth and baked onto skeletal animation.

If you want to go through all that trouble no problem. All I said was maybe make it a little smaller instead.

PolyHertz · Nov 2015

If you're using UE4 you'll want to look into APEX cloth for real time simulation.

illbleed · Nov 2015

Well i tried my best but i have really bad clipping.. for the future, how would someone model armor is they have changeable pieces? i wouldnt think they'd model multiple variations just with different armor. I'm trying to keep rigging and skinning in mind from now on.

@PolyHertz ah okay i'll look into that, thank you.

Rig finished, Now need to paint weights correctly

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