How to deform only part of a character node?

lamoid_5f20d3e469

These two pictures attached below illustrate my problem:

I want to smoothly push in the part of the chest cutting into the arm. I want to deform it so that the entire upper arm lies above it. I need to be able to select vertices or faces only the upper and lower chest not the left collar nor left upper arm. I thought that if I simply hid the collar and upper arm then I could use the node weight map brush to paint the parts of the chest to deform. But, no. Even with the two parts hidden, the weight map brush selects their vertices. So I tried the geometry editor to define a surface area. But the geometry editor tool does the same thing. It selects faces even on hidden parts.Seems like if you hide a part it should not be selected by either of those two tools. But they are selected. Is there any ways to hide or to lock out a specific part like a collar or a shoulder so that I can select the underlying faces in the chest to paint with a weight map? I have (and love) meshgrabber. But it is not good at this kind of large scale manipulation since it has only a sperical domain of influence (would need an ellipsoidal one for it to do what I want here) and if I use it to displace individual faces the result is not smooth.

In short my questions:

1) how to deform the upper and lower chest without affecting the collar or upper arm (the shoulder bend)?

2) If the weight map brush is the way to go, how do I restrict the vertices on which it operates?

3) if I need to use the geometry editor to do that, how can I restrict it to only the faces on the chest? 

Thank you, experts in advance!

Richard Haseltine

In this case you could select the polygons for the arms (via their surface or group name - through the Tool Settings pane wth the Gemetry Editor active or through right-click menus with the Nde Weight Map brush tool) and then in the Node Weight Map brush tool right-click>Geometry Locking>Lock Selected Polygons. You can also hide geometry with the Geoemtry Editor tool (right-click>Geometry Visibility)

lamoid_5f20d3e469

Thank you, Richard. What you suggested does work. But I am unable to smoothly deform the mesh by hand using the node weight map brush.

I wish there was a way to select the polygon(s) at the center of the action then select the polygons on the edge (or boundary) of the action so that the central polygons would move, the boundary polygons would not move and the other polygons inside the boundary would displace smoothly from the center of the action out to the boundary. Is there currently any way to do that?

Richard Haseltine

If you look in the Tool Settings pane with the Node Weight Map Brush active there are several mode buttons at top-right - for an elliptical selection the Sphere Gradient might work. You can also just fill the inner selection with 100% weight, expand the selection, and then run a few iterations of smoothing (right-click>Weight Editing>Smooth Selected).

lamoid_5f20d3e469

Great suggestions, Richard, as always.  I will try them. Thank you very much!