Bone weight maps

#1

I have created a toon like human character.
I drew its skelegons.
Now I want that a single “head bone” will move the entire head.
And the rest of the bones to act “normal”.
For that I believe I need to use weight maps.
So my first problem is how to set all the vertices of the head into 100% and all the rest of the body to 0% in the head weight map.
My second problem is, how do I create a weight map or weight maps for the rest of the bones?
Which suppose to act as usual, except they shouldn’t affect the head.
Do I need to create a weight map for each bone in the skelegon?
Can you think of a better way to achieve this?
(This is a character for a game, so everything needs to be in one mesh)

Thank you.

#2

I done video tutorials on this for my plugins
Should explain most of what you need only 12 megs
here

the rest explain the whole process Not totally related to the plugins will help normal LW rigging too

Main Page here for the rest of the video’s

#3

If you’re rigging a lot, you can get ShowWeights & ShowEdgeWeights for just 30 usd…
http://www.trueart.pl/?URIType=Directory&URI=Products/Plug-Ins/ShowWeights
It’s displaying weight values for each vertex in layer in real-time, and you can still work and edit mesh, vmaps etc. No value means not mapped vertex.

Zoomed in version:

#4

Are you done peddling your plugins in every damn thread that asks a question?
You’re not even answering people’s questions, you just ram down their throat anything you have in your toolbox that is even only remotely related.

This is a fourm, not your free advertising locale for everything you feel like dumping on users you know?
Once in a while I can understand, but this is definitely way over the top.

#5

Ahaha

The Jaco is kinda right.

Altough TrueArt have with no doubt great plugins, that aproach is kinda bad. yakul for now doesn’t need Showweights. He needs to understand bones/weightmaps, and your plugin is just a tool (nice one) to help on the task, but wont teach him.

But its understandable too, Christmas is close and all…

#6

Yakul,

If you think of bones as magnets and weightmaps as areas of attraction it makes it all easier. You can keep weightmaps really simple - applying them to the torso head and limbs is usually enough. Set Modeler so you can view the weightmaps as you apply them. The manual is very clear about their use. Also here’s a good tutorial from DalilLlama.

TheJaco,

Why the heavyhanded aggressive tone? Where’s your Christmas spirit? Many Lightwave users would find these TruArt plugins invaluable. I for one didn’t know this existed. Plugin developers and tutorial writers are essential to software communities. What’s the point of a forum if you’re discouraging the sharing of knowledge? There’s spam and there’s spam…

#7

To add my 2 cents about ShowWeights. I think it’s a very valid addition to this thread.

ShowWeights is on of those small tools that really makes a difference for the workflow. I don’t do one single rig without using ShowWeights these days, it really improves the control and speed of creating weightmaps in LightWave. To me it’s an essential addition to LW when talking about rigging, and Sensei is a responsive developer. So it’s a good recommendation, 30 bucks well spent if you do a lot of weightmapping.

And I also don’t see the problem of posting a plug for a commercial add-on in a thread when the plugin is very much related to the topic in one way or another. It’s imho a good thing to make people aware that these gems are out there and available. We need our valued third party developers for our favorite 3D app, and the forums is a great place to discuss and show the possibilites and adaptation of the different plugins out there. Merry Christmas all! :slight_smile:

#8

Thank you.
I have read the tutorial bobakabob linked to, and it helped me understand how to work with weightmaps.
However, I have a few problems, some are more urgent, and the others are less urgent.
First of all, I am using the export directX V1.3.3 plug in.
I am working on a game, so I need to use my model in a game.
If I export the model without weight maps and with bones and bone animation, then everything works fine.
I save the file in text format, so I can see that each bone gets appropriate weight values according to the default bone weights in lightwave.
However, if I use weight maps, then the weight in the file is according to the weight map alone.
So if I made my mesh with two weight maps.
One weight map with 100% on the head vertices and 0% at other, used by the head bone.
The second map is 100% on the whole body and on the head 0%, for the rest of the bones.
The file contains only values such as 0, 1. 0.25 for weights, unlike all the versatile values in the file when no weight maps were used.
So what I would like to have is some sort of a multiplication between the values of the x file without the weight maps and the values of the x file with the weight maps.
I think that should do the work.
I can do it in my program and keep exporting two models into x files each time I need a model.
However, I would prefer this will be done in the plug in itself.
The second problem is when I export a scene with a mesh with weight maps and animation keys to its bones. I don’t see the animation in the viewer of the directX exporter.
This might be due to the fact that the values saved in the x file are only 1, 0 or 0.25 according to the weight map and disregarding the default bones behaviour in layout.
Well, I have another less urgent problem, but I wrote a lot already, so this will do.

#9

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