Issue with rotating tail for 3d model in Maya
I've been stuck on this issue for a long time and it's been driving me crazy: I have this model of Jabba (see image 1) which I bought off of CG Trader several years back. I want the character to look exactly the same, but with the tail facing the opposite direction. Unfortunately, when I try to rotate the tail using the rotate tool from the base of the tail, the tail bends in a way where it doesn't look right (see image 2).
Here is a partial list of things I've tried:
-Rotating the spine instead of the tail
-Adding joints to the tail closer to the spine and rotating in a new axis of rotation
-painting skin weights for the joint and surrounding joints in every conceivable manner
-kind of fudging it using a tool called brsmoothweights
-messing with the attributes for tools to change rotational axes, position, etc.
-Recreating joints and re-rigging using IK handle
-flipping the model (setting x-axis = -1), I don't like this because the face is mirrored as well
None of these techniques have solved the problem, the weird bending persists. I also tried mirroring the mesh (see image 3), which looks right on one side but it leaves a Jabba with 2 tails. I'm not confident enough in my modeling abilities to go in and try to edit the mesh by like deleting vertices and stuff.
It seems like there should be an easy fix to this problem, but I'm just not seeing it. Anyone out there have any advice? It would be greatly appreciated!
Replies
if you upload the maya file I can take a quick look.
edit : ah - didnt read the original post properly
this would be hard to rig around - maybe just slice the head off, flip the rest and weld it back together?
Hmm...I'm new to this forum, it says I can't upload this file extension. Same problem when I tried to private message it. Any other way I can send it to you?
This is the best idea I've heard so far. Trouble is, I suck at mesh stuff (see attached image here:
). But maybe if I spend enough time I can make it work...
i thought you'd be able to PM it, however perhaps you could upload to google drive and then link that?
I'll share whatever I learn about it here but its one of those things where I could spend an hour asking many questions or just take a look at it for 30 seconds to determine what the issue is.
if it wont let you paste a link just pm me and I can send my email
It'll be worth waiting on what Alex has to say - my usual approach to modelling problems in Maya is to use something other than Maya
You can slice across an axis/line but I honestly can't remember what the tool is called and there's a 200% chance it's moved since 2018 which is the last one I actually did any modelling in.
Awesome. Just uploaded it to drive, lmk if you have any trouble opening the link. (I have a bunch of versions of this file bc any time I do anything that seems worthwhile I do 'save as', but I think this version is the original)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TEQPb-A_bM5MLPnko8OlLZSF0o_0twRv/view?usp=share_link
Okay I took a look at it. I was hoping that just a quick reskinning job might be enough, but unfortunately there's a few issues that would make fixing this thing to be probably like a full day of work.
It seems that the model was probably sculpted and then had an auto-retopo done, which means that the topology is only good for being in that one specific pose. I mean, the face has proper loops apparently so maybe a bit of work was done but it seems that it is assumed the tail would stay on that right side.
I tried just adjusting position of bones and reskinning but it's a fight against the topology and also the joints:
With a bit more reskinning it would be possible for it to look correct in this position, however it will only work for that specific position. Meaning if you wanted to tweak the position of the tail, it's going to look weird again. Perhaps that is fine if you only need the one position? But if there is any animations involved, I think its worth the effort to fix the thing properly.
The biggest problem is that the topology is not symmetrical and the skeleton is... I'm not sure what the skeleton is meant to accomplish, lol. Is there a rig involved? If not, probably the thing I'd do is nuke the skeleton, retopo the entire backside to be simple and symmetrical, connect that to a duplicated front, then build a simpler, symmetrical skeleton.
That is the quickest way I think it could be fixed, assuming that it is desired to have a skeleton and control rig for animations.
If you just need to change it from one static pose to another and the skeleton is not important, then probably I'd just duplicate the model, split into front and back, mirror the back, and then recombine. That's simple to do but you still end up with some hours of work because you have to fix up the UV's and then rebake from the source to get textures back to what they were.
Thanks for taking a look, I'll start exploring some of your suggestions!