distorting rigged mesh problem

[Anonymous]

Hi i'm new to maya animation and I'm starting off with trying to make character poses to slowly work my way up to learning how to animate the characters properly.

I have a Thanos model that I'm trying to pose like this picture with his arms behind his back

Here is the model I am using

But when I try to rotate the arms to put him in that pose the shoulder (and sometimes the ribcage area) distorts horribly

I'm wondering what it is I am doing wrong or if there is something I need to do to keep the mesh's body from distorting every single time I move a joint because that doesn't look right. 

[Anonymous]

hey there!

The main thing I would address is the paint weights.... maybe you have some vertices influenced by the shoulder joints, therefore getting awkward deformations. Another thing is that perfect paint weights isn't enough for a character to be 100% done. 

Usually us riggers have to add multiple corrections to the character rigs, so it properly deforms one very possible position! (:

I would check weights first, fix it as much as possible and then try adding a few corrections!!

If you want to learn about Maya Rigging from the basics to more advanced material you can check out my 14+ hour long course at "maya-rigging.com", if you're interested of course in becoming a rigger (: best of luck!!

[jordan.giboney]

Hi @Anonymous

Thanks for posting! I think @Anonymous hit it right on the money 🙂 This character appears that to need some rigging adjustments, specifically with the skin weight painting. In order to fix the skin weights, you would have to dive into some complex rigging techniques. If you are interested in learning more about rigging and skin weight painting, here are a couple of great resources to get you started:

• Intro To Rigging Concepts
• Painting Skin Weights in Maya
• Painting Skin weights tutorial
• Maya character rigging and skinning

Please let us know if there is anything else we can help you with 🙂 Or, if you feel that your answer has been sufficiently answered, please make sure to select the solution so our community can find answers to this question should they experience a similar problem.

Thanks! Have a great day!

[jordan.giboney]

Hi @Anonymous

I just wanted to check in and see how things were going 🙂 Did our explanations make sense? Any other questions I can help you with?

Hope things are going well!

[Anonymous]

Hi Dlopezdemedrano!

I am taking a course on Pluralsight on rigging so I can rig my own character, but I was wondering if the course you suggested goes into understanding what bad geometry looks like and how it will cause problems when rigging. A lot of the information I find tells me how to rig but doesn't explain what type of geometry will have good deformations vs. what a bad one will look like. My character has rolled up sleeves, and it is apart of a separate geometry from the body, so I'm not sure how to approach that for rigging and skin weights. 

Here is a snapshot for a better look. Any thoughts would be appreciated!