Paint Weights Tool Headache...:(

#1

Hello everyone! I am completely new to 3D modelling…but have run into a bit of a wall! :frowning:

I recently finished my first model earlier this week (a cat), and yesterday managed to create a rig/skeleton (joints, IK etc) and smooth bind it to the mesh. It worked! But, certain movements caused the rest of the body to react a bit weird, so I realised I wasn’t quite ready for the animation stage yet.

It was all running smoothly…until I hit the PAINT WEIGHTS TOOL. >:C

I’ve honestly spent the better part of 5 hours today looking this up online and fiddling around, but nothing works!!! When I select my model and go on to the tool, the black and white feedback doesn’t show up, and it doesn’t let me select on the model (red X).

Eventually, I made a new scene and did a little test; a basic cyclinder with a joint. I smooth-binded it and clicked the P.W.T…and sure enough, it worked! Great I thought. So I imported my model…and it didn’t work again. I deleted the rig and attempted to start from scratch, and have narrowed it down to these two issues…

1 -It doesn’t like it if I add the IK handling BEFORE the Paint Weight Tool.

2 -It’s FINE if I smooth-bind the model with ONE of the legs, but even if I add two legs…it won’t show up again!

What could I be doing wrong? Apologies for the long post, but I’m at my wits end! :frowning:

(PS: Nice to meet you all! :smiley: )

#2

As far as I know, there’s 2 options :

1- The paint weight tool doesn’t show any feedback and don’t let you paint because you simply don’t have any joint selected on the list.

2- If you don’t even have a list of joints, then it’s a bug, and it will work if you enter the paint skin weight by selecting your model, then right click on it and drag to “Paint Skin weights tool” in the marking menu.

I hope that helps

#3

Thank you for taking the time to reply, Pahuska :slight_smile: Unfortunately I tried both of these things; but still no luck :frowning:

I found out though; it doesn’t let me use the Paint Weights Tool if I’ve COMBINED my model’s meshes into one thing…how should I group them effectively? I re-jointed my model last night, and when I tried the P.W.T, it let me get colour feedback on the body! :slight_smile: (but nothing else…) the head and legs were still grey…

It must be something very simple I’m doing wrong…! :frowning:

#4

I’m curious, did you ever export as .FBX? I’ve had the paint weights tool not work sometimes when exporting a file as .FBX and re-importing it.

If you want to attach your scene I can look at it for you.

#5

(I made another comment about my progress, but it has not yet been verified by a moderator…I thanked you, Pahuska! :slight_smile: And also typed out a massive comment…grr…I figured out that it didn’t like when I tried to P.W.T when the mesh had been ‘combined’…I started over with my model (the rigging process) and it allowed me to P.W.T JUST the body…not the head, or anything else…is there a way to make the mesh ONE thing, but not combine? So the P.W.T will still work? x_x)

Thank you for your reply, tdHendrix!

I tried to export the file as FBX, but I got some error boxes come up…this is what they said:

#6

It doesn’t work on your combined object because this mesh simply doesn’t have a skincluster.

Here’s what I do when I need to skin a body with multiple mesh :

1 - Create a combined version of your model, merge the vertices roughly.
2 - paint weights on that new model
3 - Use the copy skin tool to copy weights from your skinned mesh to the original meshes

#7

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