Workflow for Modeling/Weighting in Character Animation

[LucentDreams]

delete the half of the model, then remodel, place in symmetry and make editable. then if you look in your R10 tutorials there is a section in the flabio tutorial on actually mirroring weights on one side of a character to the skeleton on the other side.

[Kokosing]

Thanks Kai. For some reason it never occurred to me to use make editable with a symmetry object. I have always used 'current state to object' which of course creates a new object without weights.

Thanks for that.

W

[silverpoundcans]

Hey Lucent do you think you could run me down how to do that teh mirroring weights thing?

im not home where i have my second installer disk! thanks man!


edit: nevermind i think i figured it out! bind half the joints but the whole single mesh then mirror everything ;) ( i think?!)

[ngrava]

I suppose You could do that. What I normally do is: Bind the whole character then edit the weights on one side making sure everything works fine and all that. Then, use the mirror tool (make sure "Weights" is the only thing selected) to transfer the weighting to the other side. But yeah, now that I think about it you could just do the whole thing in one swoop, skeleton and all.

[Kokosing]

I suppose You could do that. What I normally do is: Bind the whole character then edit the weights on one side making sure everything works fine and all that. Then, use the mirror tool (make sure "Weights" is the only thing selected) to transfer the weighting to the other side.

The problem I was having was with mirroring weights after I'd changed the mesh. Even though I still had the same number of points, the weight mirror wasn't working properly. I attributed this to the changes in vertices local coords.

W

[LucentDreams]

use VAMP todo your mirroring of weights it offers several algorithms, if nearest point doesn't work because points have been moved a little too much, then nearest surface should do a fine job.

[Kokosing]

Thanks everyone. This has been a big help.

W

[silverpoundcans]

well i tried that. it "worked" but both sides were exactly symetrical and the mirrored side had ppainted areas that wer not seen unless u erased the previous joint's weight map... worked horribly

[LucentDreams]

did you mask the one side with a point selection as covered in the r10 flabio tutorial?

[xfon5168]

did you mask the one side with a point selection as covered in the r10 flabio tutorial?

There's also a "how to" in the help documentation. Just go to the Mocca Module, choose Weight, then Options and its right at the top, theres an image. In a nutshell, you should select the points that HAVE the weighting already set. Select those, Make sure the weight tool has (selected only) checked.

Then select the joint you want the weights to be taken from, put the target in (It can be itself if it's say a spine joint or something). Set the origin in the mirror tool to Root, make sure only weights are checked, and then you can mirror it. I've used this method a few times iwth no problems.

[Zendorf]

Hey Kai,
Having used the mirror weighting style ala the Flabio tute, I found it somewhat convoluted. Are you saying that using VAMP is a better way of mirroring a whole characters' weight?

As far as I could tell, Vamp will flip the weighting around an axis but not mirror in the traditional sense....what workflow do you use for this? Ideally I would like a simple mirror option once I have weighted one side, ala XSI/Maya.

[LucentDreams]

use the mirror tool for mirroring weights in the "traditional sense" The point selection and VAMP methods are both designed more for clipping weights on the same joint.

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