Soften Edge Resetting Model Shape?

[ddrainS9MJ3]

I'm working on my first character model for a 3D modelling class at my college and have run into an interesting issue. I've been following along with one of my professor's tutorial videos, but when performing "soften edge" on my model it resets the arm of the model to the default t-pose position it was in when I first made it, rather than allowing it to retain it's shape. See the pictures below:

Before Soften Edge Command

After Soften Edge Command

The entire model is a singular, connected mesh so I'm not really sure why this is happening and why it's specifically affecting the arm. I tried removing the object history on the model among other things but I haven't been able to figure out a what's causing the issue just yet.

[damaggio]

Do you have any joints hidden? Is it skinned somehow , the models arm should be modeled either on a T pose or down pose if you prefer. Looks like you bound the skin an then deleted the history…You can also zip the file here.

[ddrainS9MJ3]

I don't believe I have any hidden joints and we haven't learned anything about skinning yet so I don't think that's it either. I can upload the project file if that would make things easier.

[damaggio · Accepted solution]

Thank you for the file Dylan, it's easy to fix this, just duplicate your mesh.You somehow set animation keys to every  vertice in the arm.

You should not animate anything during modeling , vertices have a normal angle but because you have keys on them and you apply a new normal angle they will pop. Apply smooth normals to the copied mesh and there won't be any problems.

Also another technique is modeling the arm mid point in the rotation down when is more neutral for the anatomy.

I would also recommend modeling in real scale ,  your body is extremely tiny. that's not good for many reasons to cover here. Modeling should be done in centimeters Maya default unit.

[ddrainS9MJ3]

Thank you so much, I'm unsure how I accidentally set animation keys for the vertices but it makes sense that was causing the problem! For the assignment our professor made us work in an environment with the measurement scale set to "feet" but I'll be sure to stick to centimeters for future works to keep things more accurately sized, thank you!