post normalization maya 2011

#1

So hi everyone i m skinning in maya 2011 and i m getting weights over 1. i tried to normilze and paint again same problem . so i googled a little and figure out from some cgtalk old post that maya 2011 post-normalize . what people exaclty said was :

"By default, skin clusters in Maya 2011 use the new “Post”-normalization method; what this seems to do is normalize skin weights while calculating the deformation, without destructively applying the normalization to the stored weight values. This is advertised as a way of allowing undo/redo to work correctly while painting weights, but it’s also useful for smoothing/tweaking weights without having to worry about the weight difference jumping unexpectedly to or from another influence "

so what i did was trying to move the char so maya was calculating the deformation anf then i checked the skin cluster again and still over 1 values . i was expected to find 1 values. so actually how can i update the skin weight map and see exactly how are the weights distributes?

for now i just switched back to the old mode , interactive post normalization but i like to undo while skinning so if i can make this post normalization working i would be happy

#3

mmmm that s really confusing me … painting is a way to see what influence what . post doesnt allow me to do that. becuase i how can i really understand how much one object influence a vertex ?

or for example if i have some weird deformation that can be from a bone that shoulnt be deforming … how can i find wich one is this one doing the weird deform?? if i m moving the elbow and i see some vertex from the face moving ok i can understand but in the case with many many bones like can be a face setup that can start being hard to figure out … for now i m sticking with interactive . maybe is just my way i m used to rig that is old XD

#5

ok thanks for explanation . i m using interactive too and i know it s bugging me when i smooth somethin or i press cntrl z and it spread out the weight all over . XD but at least i see what i m doing .

#6

post-normalize is one of the greatest new features in the past 2 maya releases!!!

i usually stick with “interactive” in the first run , when skinning - painting “plain hardweights” .
since i learned from my skinning-teachers , to “never smooth weights” , i usually roughly paint over the surrounding loops , with e.g. a weight of 0.3 .

or i create a lowres-skinning cage ( symmetrical ) , in order to make a “fast basic-skinning” and then "copy weights , to my highres-mesh .

once i am happy , with the basic-deformation , i then sometimes switch front and back , from “interactive” to “post”-mode … the good thing about the “post”-normalize-mode is , is ,that you “can smooth the weights , without running into the bad habits , that the interactive mode has” — e.g. in faces , with lots of joints , and once you smooth , you often get unwanted results . as the post-normalize-mode just smoothes the weights for one joint at a time , and does not normalize between different other joints ( like when you have e.g. 5 maxInfluence-joints , 3 are only used , but the interactive-smooth then tries to normalize on 5 joints , or whatver the problem might be … i am not sure about that - but it really screws up your weights , during skinning , when hitting the smooth-button in interactive-mode ) … so in “post”-mode “smooth” can be used , without running into these problems , also it is very great to “smooth”-weights , one-joint-after-another , on highres-meshes , after copying weights from a lowres-cage of your character .

after smoothing in post-mode , you can then switch back to interactive and all the weights get normalized-properly .

i personally dont want to miss the post-mode any longer , when it comes to skinning , as everything is sooo much easier , faster and nicer that way !

#7

thanks for the answer but actually what i want to understand is how can i understand what infulence what in post mode??? do i have just to watch if it looks right the deformation without care about the painted influence i see?

#8

ah , so you mean the “color of the feedback” … yeah , that is a bit strange sometimes . since i usually switch back to interactive-mode , after painting in “post” - weights sum up to 1.0 again and the colors are again as you might expect them , so i usually swithc front and back “post” and “interactive” - after a few operations . i tweak my weights step-by-step as in skinning , some steps are irreversible … tweaking is the last step .

once you are worksing too long in post-mode and did too many changes you cannot “see” the “real-weighting” any longer , as you might have “added” here and there , so switching front and back interactive and post - here and there - can help .

i usually always have a sort of “deformation-test-animation” on my joints ( e.g. on the body i rotate each joint into the extremes and create some basic animation test over a 200 - 400 frames timeline , with key-poses on every 5th or 10th frame / and on the face i animate each facial-joint , e.g. the joints at the brows , when i animate them , they come out of the head like “horns of a devil” or like unicorns … and that way i iterate through all the face-joints , in order to see if the skinning is smooth and even , and if there aren’t any vertecies misbehaving - so i really pull these joints out unnaturally exegerated .

i always try to create my skinweights in a very precise way . and i made myself some tiny scripts over the time , e.g. setting100%weights , creating falloffs , importing and exporting weights by vertexorder , copy / paste and average weights , swapping joints , average loops - getting and setting the weights on loops , based on their neighboor-weights , and so on … so … i do not actually paint weights , those are more or less created with different self-written-scripts , and in certain cases , i really work on a vertex-level , but in most cases i can quite comfortably iterate through the different segments of my topology .

once i have an approximate , clean skinning , i start to tweak the weights in postmode and i usually smooth “one time” the end , in post-mode . increasing some weights here and there - or setting surrounding weights to 0 , where there shall be no deformation at all .

well , in the end it is a lot about the feeling and experience you develope over the time .

#9

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