Can't weight a model properly

[Suricate]

One important thing with bones and meta effectors: If one bone has a weight/meta effector assigned, all bones should have a weight/meta effector assigned.

Apart from that, I usually use very simple meta effectors with only black/white values. So I use either the 'Constant' or the 'All Connected' modes of the effectors.

The effectors of one meta effectors add up and then their addad values are clipped to the 'Min/Max' settings of the meta effector (usually these values are 0.0/1.0 by default). So if you want to e.g. have one meta effector controlling all vertices except for a few selected, make an effector with a constant value of 1.0 that surrounds everything and then an effector with a negative influence that surrounds only the few selected vertices.

[JoeCosman]

not necessarily. you dont have to have a meta effector for each bone to achieve good deformation. if it's something that only requires separating the mesh into two deformable parts, you can use just one metaEffector, and apply it to all the bones. here's the trick:

those bones you dont want included in white part of your MetaEffector, you check "invert weights" on. They will only affect the non-weighted mesh.

Think of them as weightmaps in Lightwave7, where you use it to Mask off the mesh that uses multiple bones. once that area has been masked off(weighted), do bone weighting as usual.

...And setting the Falloff on the bones to lesser numbers will soften the weighting between them.

Factored weights will only clip the weighting of outside the effector field, but it still behaves according to the Bone properties,(I tend to think 'range' button in the bone block) so if you have a part of a mesh that is far away from a bone, it will not be affected until you A. increase the size of the bone, B. put a child bone (assigned to the meta) on that spot, Or C. increase the weighting properties, such as L-factor or falloff.


Sound like enough stuff to work with?

-JoeC

[belseth]

Thanks to both Joe and Suricate. The documentation really does gloss over the subject and it's really critical. I wish there was a way of manually deselecting points from a given bone's influence. Weighing is definately turning into a bigger hassle than either Lightwave or Maya. The character is deceptively simple but even Lightwave with no weighting handled it better with default settings. Even the jaw bone which works really well from the front is deforming the back of the head. I lessened some of the foot deforming problems by severely limiting the bones influence but that caused other problems. I'll try some of the hints you both have given and I'll see if I can work it out. Some of the rigs work really well out of the box but if you have a nonstandard character it looks like you should be ready for a lot of extra weighting and tweaking. Sad to hear since the current project only involves two human characters and the rest are similar to the first model. Messiah works really well on humanoid charaters but the passive weighting seems to get confused on some nonhuman characters. If they can't add weight painting they desperately need some way like Truspace to selectively eliminate a given points influence. Basically be able to determine what bones or which bone affects a point.

Thanks again for all the hints. Looks like I need to spend a day experimenting with different effector set ups and settings to figure out what combination works best on this style of character. That's one major plus to weight painting, it's a very controllable process where you know if you spend the time you'll get the results you need. Working with influences like this it's more trial and error. Just wish there was a better option in Messiah.

[necro888]

have u tried to use additional bones on the main face to block out the leg deformation ?

messiah is bit different and the meta effectors are not such a big help in many ways

good luck

nec

[stooch]

rule of thumb.

if stuff is deforming when you dont want it to, add a holder bone to get a handle on the problem. You can quickly play with the effect radius by scaling the bone size, its logical though.

80% of your problems will be solved with this technique. for the next 10% of the issues, meta effectors take over, however the last 10%, well that turns into an incredible pain in the ass. Thats where i wish i had traditional weight mapping. Especially since all my other apps support it natively...

[belseth]

I spent last night doing trial and error and basically did what the last two posters suggested. The Meta Effectors were nessaccary but the effect was pretty weak. It mostly was a trial and error process adjusting bone strength and adding anchor bones on areas I didn't want to move. The meta effectors helped somewhat to isolate the influence but you can't depend on it. The toughest area was there are a couple of flaps of fabric hanging off where his bandana is tied. They aren't too close to the head but even then it was tricky to get the bone strength and anchor boning right. The one bit I got perfect and the other is 90% but it's a minor thing so it's more than adequate. It's frustriating because that would have been an easy fix with weight mapping. I had another problem area with a pants on the right leg. It was getting dragged by the toe. I had to use an anchor bone on that. One cool thing that did work is I was able to adjust a meta effector into an elongated shape to make the jaw deform better. It's really handy that they are just parented so they can be dragged into the right position but still follow the bone.

I like Messiah much better than Lightwave for animating and it is faster than Maya for rigging and animating. I just wish they'd break down and add weight mapping. You really need some kind of point specific control. It's working well on more traditional characters but I can see serious problems with more elaborate or non traditional looking characters.

Thanks everyone. Been a big help.

[stooch]

retarded. sorry for the triple post.

[stooch]

wtf. stupid forums.

[stooch]

JoeCosman has some tutorial cds that you should buy, he has some tricks including morph shapes that put the geometry in a more boneable state, allowing you to solve the last 10% of the issue. but its a workaround and unnecessarily tedius when compared to the ease of weight mapping or point exclusion.

Having per point weight-sets would be just daaandy. Still keeping the original weighting but allowing a tool that is precise and a complement to the toolset.

[belseth]

I didn't know he had Tutorials availible for Messiah. I'll check them out. I really do find their documentation pretty chaotic. The information in them is good it's just laid out oddly and a lot of things get glossed over or are avoided entirely. They barely mention weighting. I guess I figured out why. I have been running onto some rather elaborate rigs people have done to address the issues. Weight mapping would just be a much easier way of dealing with it. I didn't even bother with organic characters in Lightwave until it added weight mapping. I always had too many problems. Maya is stunning but it's really time consuming to rig a character. It's pretty much an artform unto itself in the Maya world. The characters virtually animate themselves once they are rigged right but it's a lot of hours of meticulous rigging to get a character set up. I like the expression system in Messiah. It's a bit more like Maya. I've never been able to figure out expressions in Lightwave but they are fairly easy to use in Maya. With Messiah you just need to tweak them with multipliers and such.

There's a lot of good in Messiah it just lacks a few essential tools to be an extremely cool app. I was playing with functions like Melt for doing things like passive foot expanding when it contacts the ground. There are similar things in the Maya world but I have no idea with Lightwave. Also it's insanely fast to set in Messiah.

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