Paint Weights tool distorting my geometry

#1

Hey I have been racking my brain for ages trying to figure out a way if how I can get around this problem but I just cant get around it so I thought Id try my luck here. Im making a very low poly game character. Ive rigged it up and everything and am now playing with the paint weights tool on the legs. However when im trying to clean the area around the crotch this always happens:

I try and place the verts back into place using the move tool but it seems that its locked for some reason or another. I have checked to see that the verts are all merged and they are so im not quite sure what the problem is, any help would be greatly appreciated :slight_smile:

Note: it also does the same thing for the other leg just the mirror image of whats happening on the right leg.

Skin Painting weights is moving the geometry?
#2

First you have to understand that all vertices in Maya will always have a combined weight of 1. If you reduce it by 0.5, maya will add that extra 0.5 to some other joints. Which joint that is, is totally unpredictable.

In your case, you replace it with the value of 0, so Maya is giving it a weight of 1 to something else we don’t even know what it is.

So when you paint weight, the common work flow is to select a joint, and paint to “add” weight. Only add, always add. Never reduce.

#3

You can check the ‘smooth skins’ tab in the component editor to find out what’s influencing that vertex. This looks like you have a value of less than one on your vert. Make sure you ‘Enable skin weight normalization’ before you start painting weights. You can ‘normalize skin weights’ to fix that vert, or you can fix it by hand in the component editor.

#4

Awesome thanks for the replies, ill give that a bash, cheers :slight_smile:

#5

Panupat is generally right, but you can reduce or smooth your skin, when you hold (lock) all the unwanted influences. You can also mask the area to be weighted by painting on a selection of vertices instead of the whole mesh.

#6

I don’t like subtracting either but prefer sticking to adding weights.
But yea Panupat is right in what he is saying. The subtract is kinda misleading I think, as it doesn’t really subtract anything - but transfers weight to nearby verts instead.

#7

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.