Weight Mapping Issue
Halfdedsoldier_cc519dc60c
Posts: 22
I am trying to rig a piece of armor that I have made in blender. I made a piece of armor for his chest and ran transfer utility with no issues. The chest armor fits well and bends well at his chest with literally NO adjustments to weight maps or anything else. The bottom piece is pretty much the same thing, however as we all know, having clothing move between the legs is a nightmare. The famous stretching completely in between the legs. So i tried weight mapping the armor, but have had no luck thus far. Here is what I have done : I imported my clothing and it sits on the character just right. I convert it from prop to figure, so that I may add bones and adjust weight maps as necessary. I go into the weight map brush and select the hip bone of my armor thats between the legs. As soon as I select it, I notice that it is filled with 100% red, which is obviously not what is required to bend properly. I remove the weight map via tool settings, and it dissapears. Thats all great, but as soon as i click add general weight map in tool settings, my clothing dissapears!!! Its still in the scene and "selected" as it shows the bounding box. Where is my clothing mysteriously going? I have weight mapped other items and this has never happened. Thank you so much for your help in advance. It would be greatly appreciated. I can answer more questions if you may have any. Thanks again.
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You do NOT remove the Weight Mapping from the Hip bone. If you remove the weight mapping from the hip bone by just erasing it, it has nowhere to go and will wreck your item. Your item is disppearing BECAUSE YOU REMOVED THE WEIGHT MAPPING FROM THE HIP BONE in an incorrect way.
By painting a weight map on different bones, DAZ Studio will actually transfer the weight from the root bone (which in this case is the hip) to whatever bone you are painting. So let's say you have full red weights on the Hip and nothing on other bones. The moment you start painting something on - for example - the leg bone, you will notice that the Hip Bone no longer has any weight mapping there in the exact amount you just added to the leg.
Anyway - after you use Transfer Utility on an item - it is converted into a figure. You do not have to "convert it to a figure" in order to add bones IF YOU USED TRANSFER UTILITY on it already. Just use the joint editor to add bones and node weight map brush to paint weight maps on the new bones.
You only use "Convert prop to figure" when you have an item in the scene that won't be processed by Transfer Utility.
Okay, thank you for informing me on that about removing the weight map from the hip bone. So is it not possible to only have a hip bone and edit its weight map from scratch? It is a armor piece and it really only needs one bone (a hip i would imagine). It is essentially a loin cloth that i need to adjust the weight map of so it bends better between the legs. Honestly, I didnt think i would want to run transfer utility because i do not want the whole skeleton of a character for a loin cloth. Maybe I am wrong? Is there a way for me to add a single hip bone only and adjust its weight map without it having to stay 100% red? Thank you so much for replying. I appreciate it.
Duh, it just hit me. It took me awhile of thinking to realize that, no you cannot weight map a single bone without other bones being attatched to it. I need to create a hip bone and then create a couple child bones and weight map those to get them to move with the cloth. Thanks for helping me open my eyes to that!
I think ive got it down now. Its funny, i have rigged a chain before, yet for some reason because it was clothing, i took a totally different approach.
Using the Transfer utility ensures the bone centres are in the right place - I'd think you'd at least want hip, pelvis, and abdomen for a loincloth. The joint centres are essential for fitting. You can remove unwanted bones with the Joint Editor, and as Thomas Windar says you can then add new bones and reweight as needed.
Hello again, I am doing some weight mapping and am having all sorts of issues. I dont seem to be able to paint blue which is what i need to do. Am i doing something wrong? As soon as i run transfer utility i get spikes sticking out of my clothing before even moving the character to test bending. I went ahead and bent the left leg forward (thigh) and of course the inner leg area is tweaked (i figured that would happen which is why i know i need to weight map). Thats all fine being that way because thats usually how it is, but when you cant even do the weight mapping, then thats a bit of an issue. Also, is there an easier way to figure out which bone needs to be weight mapped based off which bone i move? Say for instance, i bend the left thigh, and the "pants" tweak in the middle of the legs, is it the left thigh bone that i need to adjust the weight map on? Thank you.
It also seems as though it doesn not matter what bone i paint on, nothing is affected by it. I mean it moves slightly, however it doesnt undo the knot of fabric that is happening. The cloth literally is crumpling and no weight mapping i do seems to affect it.
When i use ALT and left click to remove the weight, it will only remove the weight from where it is painted blue, but it will not remove the weight where it is red. Why do these crazy cooky things happen? Sometimes, things will be completely different and work totally differently than the last when im not changing anything. Sometimes it paints blue fine, other times i can ONLY paint red. Sometimes i can remove the weight and make it gray, other times i cannot. I honestly do not understand. No matter which bone i remove the weight map from, it literally makes my clothing AND charcater completely disappear, making me start all over again doing something in which i dont know how to do to begin with. The reason i remove the weight map is so that i can ADD IT BACK and have a blank general weight. I wish to paint blue over red areas, but cannot. So i go to plan b, which is to clear all weights, which makes the character disappear as well. I am at a loss.
Another thing i notice is that i am not allowed to paint blue over red areas. Impossible... Does not work... Never has... How can people say that the weight maps needs to be edited/adjusted if its literally impossible to? Like the software literally wont allow for it. Im sorry if I sound snobby but it just seems a little crazy to me. Others make it sound so simple, oh just adjust the weight map. If only that was possible!
I have buckles on my piece that completely crumple up after running the transfer utility and i am not even moving the character yet. I have been weight mapping to simply fix the crumpled up buckle before i can even move on to bending the thighs, etc.
I fill the buckle in with 100% solid RED on the rigidity map and when i bend the character, the buckle completely distorts and stretches the buckle. Am i truly not understanding what RIGID means? It sounds to me like that should let the buckle MOVE with the rest of the clothing, but not BEND the actual buckle itself? Obviously i am wrong. I really need help with this.
Rigidity Maps do not affect posing, they aret used solely to control the effect of morphs generated by AutoFollow.
If you are getting weird artefacts before applying any posing (or morphing) that does sound odd - the weight map is a multiplier for the transform, with a zero transform there should be zero effect. Weight-painting can become unresponsive - usually saving, closing, restarting, and reloading deals with that.
Thank you for clarifrying rigid maps. Let me tell you my flow. I have my character, and i import the clothing into daz and it fits. I run transfer utility with default on G3M and default on my clothing. I use pants projection template. When i run it, the clothing moves up several feet and is inside of him.
SO i delete that and re import for another attempt. This time, I do current on my G3M and current on the clothing and pants projection template. I must check the box "reverse source shape from target", otherwise the clothing pops up, but not back down. When i click run, the clothing moves up several feet, then pops back down where it belongs, and my buckle gets messed up and crumpled.
Thank you for clarifrying rigid maps. Let me tell you my flow. I have my character, and i import the clothing into daz and it fits. I run transfer utility with default on G3M and default on my clothing. I use pants projection template. When i run it, the clothing moves up several feet and is inside of him.
SO i delete that and re import for another attempt. This time, I do current on my G3M and current on the clothing and pants projection template. I must check the box "reverse source shape from target", otherwise the clothing pops up, but not back down. When i click run, the clothing moves up several feet, then pops back down where it belongs, and my buckle gets messed up and crumpled.
So when/ how do I use a rigid map? I actually still do not know when or where it is appropriate to use one. I have buckles that stretch, based off the name, i figured making them rigid would make them not bend, however i am wrong.
If you are referring to changing the fit to mode to auto follow transforms instead of redirect transforms, there is no difference.
Why does removing the weight map and adding it back cause everything to disappear? That one is very mind boggling, much like all else.
You might well want to aply a rigidity group to your buckle -that way when a shape that didn't have a morph in the clothes was added the buckle would be defomed evenly rather than picking up distoritions from the morph.
It sounds as if your figure was not in its zero state when you made the clothes - the distortions and spikes will be the result of the Transfer Utility trying to remove the effect of the applied shaping, or possibly the result of then geenrating a match for the shape, or a mixture of both.
I have added a rigid weight of 100% to my buckles as stated previously. That doesn't seem to do anything on my clothing here, I am clearly doing something wrong. I add 100% red weight on the rigidity map and when i bend the character, the buckle completely bends/stretches still. Honestly the buckles at this point are the least of my worries. I have a question that i would an answer to. I have figured out some basics of weight mapping on my own and am able to now paint and get the mesh to move what i am painting. I get the left thigh bend weight map looking good, and it bends the clothing pretty great actually, so i move to the right thigh bend. I complete doing the right thigh bend weight mapping and it is looking good just like the left. Now when i bend the right thigh it looks good but when i go back to the left thigh, my weight mapping is gone and the clothing is back to the way it was before i painted. When i go to the next map, it seems to remove the previous one. Can you please give me some idea as to why this may be happening?
I said you might want to apply a Rigidity Map to deal with issues from morphs that you don't directly support, not that it would help with bending. To make the buckle bend as a unit it needs to have the same weight on each vertex (and you will probably need to add morphs to make sure it doesn't then cut into the figure when posed).
If the weight maps are completely going that sounds like a problem - however, if the areas you are editing overlap (as with a skirt-type item) then you need to bear in mind that weights are normalised - for each vertex the weights on a particular map (the only map for General weight mapping, or each separate axis bend and scale map for TriAx) from all bones must add up to one - so adding weight on one map that is already affected by another will subtract weight from that other map.
I am sorry Richard. I read the last message you sent too fast and missed that you were referring to helping with the morphs portion and not the bending buckle. I am sorry.
I am done with asking all the questions and will go and figure it all out one of these days. Thank you for the help you have given me, I just truly do not understand anything regarding weight mapping. Sorry to waste your time when i cannot understand what I am being told. It's not that you do not explain it well, i think that 1. I just cannot understand any of it. 2. I am not sure were on the same page with certain things.
I also wanted to point out that i went ahead and took a look at the weight maps that came with genesis 3 male and noticed that he doesn't have any weight on his hip. I probably did not have it clicked or something, my bad again. Thank you Richard, sorry again.
Im sorry, one last question. Is there a way I can delete this thread so it doesn't have to stay on the forum page taking up space from others? Thank you. If I knew how, I would certainly do it.
The lack of a hip weightmap is correct - all the bones are children of the hip, so when the hip is moved everything follows - this is why weight maps are (usually) normalised, if they were allowed to add up to more (or less) than 1 then the affected vertices would move more or less than the actual transform. (There may be occasions when that is OK, for example with the handle bones sometimes used to pose a skirt, but usually it would be highly undesirable.)
There's no harm in leaving a thread, and the information may help others.