Weight map brush won't substract once the area is red

thilion

I'm sure this has been asked a hundret times, but a search didn't bring any results.

I'm weight painting an area of a rigged prop. I can add the weight by normal clicking the left mouse button and substract by holding down the Alt-key while painting, but once the weight is all the way red, I can't substract any weight. It stays red. Until then the color changes from blue back to grey.

What am I doing wrong? How can I get the weight of a red area?

andya_b341b7c5f5

I don't have a solution, but I can see the same problem so if you are doing something wrong, then so I am.  I'd never noticed this before.  I'm using 4.11.0.383 on Windows too.  I'll be interested to know what's going on here because it doesn't look right.  Even if I select an entire figure and then try to set the weight of the selected to zero using Weight Editing->Fill Selected from the context menu, the fully weighted areas won't budge while everything else goes to zero.

Richard Haseltine

Try adding weight for the same area on the amp for the bone that you want to inherit the weight you are removing (the total weight on a vertex always sums to 1, unless you turn off the autonormalisation option).

thilion

So far the only solution I have found is to remove the weight map and start over. But that can't be the only way, can it?

Richard, I would like to ask you or one of your colleagues to reenact (is that the correct word?) the procedure of weight map editing of a simple figure, and see if you can take weight off a fully red area. I have noticed now that the weight of Rigid Weight Maps or Blend Weight Maps can be reduced, even if the entire figure is red. But with General Weight Maps or Rotation Weight Maps the weight cannot be reduced once the weight is 100% red.

sturstein

I realise this thread was posted a while ago, but I was having the same problem and since there didn't seem to be a definitive soultion I thought I'd mention what worked for me. I went into the Normalize tab of the Node Weight Map Brush tool and set Rotation Weights to 'off'. Since then the subtraction function has been working fine for me.

thilion

Thank for sharing that experience!

Padone

Though thaf's exactly what @Richard said and nobody listened.

crazelman

Hi i have the same problem but cant do the sturstein solution. When i go to normalize everything is on auto and i cant change it. any idea

delectro_9f6dc82a97

For those stumbling around in here and finding this, if you have 100% red weights and can't reduce them, use the smoothing tool on them. It'll make them less than 100%, and you can then use the alt-leftmousebutton to have your way with them.

hansolocambo

delectro_9f6dc82a97 said:

For those stumbling around in here and finding this, if you have 100% red weights and can't reduce them, use the smoothing tool on them. It'll make them less than 100%, and you can then use the alt-leftmousebutton to have your way with them.

Working on very small objects, such as custom made "fibermesh" eyelashes :

- normalize > Rotation Weights off, doesn't make any difference on such meshes.

- Smoothing with Ctrl then substracting with Alt usually works (although it doesn't make sense when one's used to the perfect weighting tools in Blender), but if you're trying to weight multiple very small objects sush as lashes : you're doomed. Because once 1 hair is fully red, there's nothing to smooth anymore.

2022.07   any improvement on that I might have missed :/   ?

takaralolita_55b2dc7055

Seriously, How can this be so bad? 

How can you not just removed weight painted on without doing 3 things to work around. I am in middle of project, and spending 2 hours just trying to figure out how to fix the weight painting issues. I honestly have never come across a piece of software more frustrating and unitutive and lack of support. 

So its 2023 now, and this still has not been fixed? 

richardandtracy

I agree, the lack of help files (up to date or not) is infuriating. Just not right.

Regards,

Richard

Richard Haseltine

takaralolita_55b2dc7055 said:

Seriously, How can this be so bad? 

How can you not just removed weight painted on without doing 3 things to work around. I am in middle of project, and spending 2 hours just trying to figure out how to fix the weight painting issues. I honestly have never come across a piece of software more frustrating and unitutive and lack of support. 

So its 2023 now, and this still has not been fixed? 

Depending on context weight removal is just a matter of painting it out - but with bones the total weight on each vertex (for each map) has to add to 100%, so removing weight from one map will add it on to the parent's map. I'm not sure what you are wanting "fixed".

thilion

I'm afraid our problem is that we (most users) don't fully understand the concept of weight painting. I, for example, see a new figure all grey when I turn on weight painting, and then, when I paint weight onto the figure, I see parts become blue and eventually red and think "before there was 0%, now it is getting toward 100%". It never occurred to me that the weight has to add up to 100% (which sounds logical) but then I ask myself: Where is the 100% weight when I see a new figure all in grey? That looks like there is 0% weight anywhere on the figure, including all parent areas. If the weight has to add up to 100%, where is it on a new figure that has never been weight painted?

Is there a DAZ-document or any knowledge base article on this subject?

Richard Haseltine

If there are no actual weights assigned (no colour) then I think the weights are implictly assigned to the root node, e.g. the Hip, so that the whole mesh moves as a unit when that is adjusted.

barbult

Mada gave me a tip once. She said that if the weight subtract paint brush isn't working, apply the smooth weight brush first, then try the subtract paint brush again.

crosswind

Or try to give a couple of drags on that sensitive slider, it'll make it work in most of the cases..

jbowler

Richard Haseltine said:

If there are no actual weights assigned (no colour) then I think the weights are implictly assigned to the root node, e.g. the Hip, so that the whole mesh moves as a unit when that is adjusted.

So far as I can tell if there is no weight on a vertex its position is solely a function of the parent node.  For most clothing that means the character coordinates.  Changing the parent of the clothing item would probably cause it to track the new parent just as happens with an unrigged prop (e.g. a weapon parented to a hand) but I didn't try that.

This is why "autonormalize" is important.  If a vertex ends up with less than a total of 100% weight the shift caused by even a small percentage of the original vertex coordinates, as seen in an unparented (+ no "fit to") clothing item get factored in and that results in massive shifts of the vertex.  I just tried it and this is what happens; the vertices go all over the place.  Deleting the final bone does the same thing but at least it is obvious what is going on; the clothing item jumps to some inappropriate place/rotation.

I remember there was a survey a while back (a couple or few years ago) about whether we wanted "unrigged" dForce-only clothing.  I said "yes", but I'm not sure how it could be made to work; the garment has to start out not intersecting the character (otherwise an instant explosion results) and parts of it (verticies) that are close to the character at any point in time have to track the character movement much better/faster than dForce seems able to do while other parts (verticies) just float behind.