Painting Weights Stretching Issue

[Anonymous]

I have been struggling with painting weights around the upper leg (thigh) joint and shoulder of my quadruped model. As far as the neck, upper arm, knee, wrists, and elbow joints, those move just fine. 

In the upper leg and shoulder area, the colors do not transition into the black part of the model gradually instead only the faces that touch the black are the only areas that stretch around the upper leg as if I was working with a solid white color and black.

I have tried smoothing it out, but smoothing does not change anything. A few times when I would click off the color joint then back on, it would show that the skin was painted white around the edges touching the black. I have also tried working with only black and white, but it does not recognize it as smoothed.

I am working in post. Does anyone have a solution? I can post a copy of my file later if this can't be solved with words.

Thanks! 

[mcw0]

Maya's paint tools are quite archaic and in need of a serious update.  Give BraveRabbit a try.  But within Maya, you're issue may be a couple of things.  First, maxInfluences.  Turn that off so there are no restrictions.  Then the main issue.  If an influence has a zero weight, no amount of smoothing will change that until you specifically deal with that influence directly.  Meaning, if you have a leg influence selected and apply a smooth, Maya won't do anything with zero weighted influences.  You have to select one of the torso influences, in your case maybe the hips/pelvis.  And directly affect the weights.  Once you have some value other than zero, then Maya will perform which ever function you've selected ("Replace", "Add", etc).  You can eventually get the result you want.  But it's much slower in Maya's native tools than in something like BraveRabbit.

OH, forgot to add that Maya's color representation is not always correct.

[Anonymous]

Thanks, I'll test what you said tomorrow. Is there a free demo for brave rabbit?

[mcw0]

Yes there is.

https://youtu.be/fSU52KJ9VT0

[Anonymous]

It worked! I bumped the max influence from 5 to 15 now they are more evenly spaced out.

I don't know why it didnt work at 5 in the first place.