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Keithtron
12-20-2007, 10:39 PM
Ok, so I'm working on rigging this monkey in Maya 2008, which just has to walk/run on a treadmill for 15-20 secs, so it's not a horribly tricky rig. I'm having a weird problem with the skinning though. Most of it is skinned ok, but I'm trying to fix some pretty bad problems in the elbow area. However, when I try to paint those verts, some completely random verts in the head or other parts of the arm are affected instead. Also, at some point the skin weights started appearing very blotchy. When I go to paint the weights, I'm seeing some horrible blotchy-ness that doesn't appear to properly represent the actual skinning on the model. I dunno if it's just a display issue or if it's related to my problem.

I dunno what could be going on here. Any ideas? My only thought was that maybe skin weights are based on a UV set and there are some overlapping UV's or something, but I dunno if the weights have any sort of relation to UV's or not. Are the UV's only used for importing/exporting skin weight maps?

Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks!
lkruel
12-22-2007, 04:37 AM
Two things I can think of is

1 - you're using the smooth tool - the smooth tool in Maya will add a bunch of small weights all over the place, it's sort of a pain and might cause some issues

2 - you have "maintain maximum influences" on which causes the verts to pop if you're not careful.

the other thing too could be your video card...

Let me know if that helps or it isnt any of them
Keithtron
12-23-2007, 07:25 AM
Nope, it's not the smooth tool. I'm try to use the add/replace tools. The verts that are blowing up on me are actually really far away, too far for the smooth tool to affect them. For example, I'll be painting the side/back of the elbow, and verts on the front of the bicep and way up in the ear or back (!) will be affected.

I don't think the maintain max influences could be it either, since the verts that are popping are ones that I'm not even painting on or near.

And yeah, the blotchy weights could be the video card, I thought of that. I'm using my gf's crappy laptop to work while I'm out of town. However, I don't see why they'd display fine for a while, then suddenly start appearing all weird.
lkruel
12-23-2007, 04:11 PM
Yeah the replace tool can also be weird sometimes, I'd stick with add at very low weights and kinda add influences slowly.

Laptop videocards tend to overheat sometimes too which might cause the weirdness. Is it a Dell? I know that Dell had some unsuported videocards for a while

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=9683256

here's the list of supported hardware, check it out to see if your card is supported.
Keithtron
12-27-2007, 03:22 AM
Hmmm... I don't see how the unsupported video card could be the problem, because it's not just a display issue. The tool is affecting verts that I'm not painting on or near. I was using a crappy Vaio laptop, so that probably wasn't helping though. But I'm not going to be using that one any more, that was just while I was out of town. I'll be trying it on a more legit machine tomorrow.

** crosses fingers **


Perhaps I should try v8.5 instead of 2008 as well....
Keithtron
12-29-2007, 11:10 AM
I think I figured out what the problem is.
:-)

I ended up backtracking to an older version that was working properly, and working forward from there. I ended up running into the same problem after merging a couple stray verts in my skinned model. I should've known better, but we all make stupid mistakes I suppose. So yeah, merging verts in a skinned model is BAD! (Simply moving verts around is ok though, at least as far as I can tell.)

If it's of any help for others, my simple little workflow when I need to modify a skinned model in such a way is....
0) Save file first!
1) Set skeleton to bind pose
2) Export skin weight maps
3) Detach skin
4) Modify model... merge verts or whatever else you need to do
5) Import skin weight maps
6) Test and save to new file

Probably pretty obvious, but it could be helpful for some people.
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