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Weight Painting causes Bad Vertices

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Message 1 of 6
rhoetzlein
1488 Views, 5 Replies

Weight Painting causes Bad Vertices

Would appreciate if anyone has suggestions on this issue...
I am working on weight painting. After I paint some bones, certain vertices nowhere nearby start to move unexpectedly. In the screenshot the left arm is rotated, and isolated vertices in the neck and hair move. I've already discovered this is because those vertices somehow gain some weights (influence) even though I didn't paint there.

The real problem is.... The influence on the bad vertices could even come from bones I haven't even touched or weight painted yet - if I weight paint the arm, maybe the finger suddenly has a weight assigned to a neck vertex..

AND... if I try and flood fill bad vertices with 0 as suggested (on youtube), then when I start weight painting again OTHER vertices become equally messed up. This is perpetually, completely un-usable. I've tried reskinning several times (with diff # of max bones).

Any ideas?

5 REPLIES 5
Message 2 of 6
zewt
in reply to: rhoetzlein

Make sure "Maintain Max Influences" is unchecked on the skinCluster node.  It always causes weird problems and should always disabled.

 

If it's not that, I can take a look at the scene if you can attach it.

Message 3 of 6
Kahylan
in reply to: rhoetzlein

Hi!

 

This could be caused by a variety of different things.

 

It is not uncommon that you get weight assigned to bones that you haven't touched yet, weights in Mayas Skincluster are "Normalized" on default, which means that each Vertex has a total weight value of 1 at all time. So if you flood away influence from one joint, it is going to end up on another joint. Normally that is a joint close by, but if you are working with a very small model or if all the closer joints are locked this can also be a finger if you flood away from the neck.

What helps to prevent this is to be concious about which joints are locked/unlocked in the weightpaint tool, a joint with locked weights (Lock left next to their name in the weightpaint tool) won't get randomly assigned weights. I often only have two joints unlocked, the one I want to take weight away from and the one I want to give that weight to. That way I don't get surprised when flooding.

Also additive workflow is more reliable than subtractive, if you are giving weight to your joints instead of taking it away, you know exactly where the weight is going. So for you hair for example, instead of flooding it with 0 when you have the arm selected, flood those vertices with 1 when you have the joint selected you want them to follow (for example the head).

 

If vertices randomly getting weight assigned on joints that are locked, that could be a case of bad geometry. It is something that is common if there are overlapping faces or overlapping edges in the geometry. Try turning on Border Edges (Display-> Polygons-> Border Edges) And check if your sweater and hair have any border edges that overlap. If they do merge those edges together.

 

I hope this helps!

Message 4 of 6
rhoetzlein
in reply to: zewt

@zewt 

 

Here is the model. 
The left arm is rotated in this save and the problem should be visible.

I think the issue may be related to the multiple layers of vertices due to clothing covering body. 
However, I know that's not the only issue, because the bad vertex problem still happens with the outermost visible layer of vertices. So even if the underlying layers were not present it would still be an issue.





Message 5 of 6
Baboonian
in reply to: rhoetzlein

select the vertices and press "hammer skin weights"

very very many polygons! you should go to ZBrush and make "reconstruct subdives"

Message 6 of 6
Kahylan
in reply to: rhoetzlein

I took a look at your Model. Honestly, there should be a lot of cleanup done before you start rigging...

1) The different parts are one sided and open at various places. They should either be closed objects or connected to each other in a way that doesn't leave holes to avoid problems later in rendering.

2) Your UV's are extremely unclean, they overlap, the skin parts are just a flat frontal projection, etc etc etc... This could eventually be what creates the irratic behaviour of your skinweights. And if it doesn't, it will prohibit you from exporting/importing skinweights. clean UV's are quite important for rigging to go smoothly.

3) as @Baboonian already said. Your polycount is way to high for the amount of detail in your model. There are tons of unneeded vertices that only make rigging harder, slow down the rig and give more room for miscalculations, like the ones you are experiencing, to occur.

 

As I said in my first answer, if you want to handle a mesh like this in skinning, you need to work extremely careful. You should use an Addative workflow. Make use of selection based flooding. And make use of locking/unlocking joints in the paint skinweights tool.

But if you plan to go into rendering with this project later, you should clean up the mesh first, because something like this can be rigged, it can't be properly rendered. For example you won't have the ability to use SSS and you won't be able to apply complex textures.

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