Rigging and Weight Mapping is so bugged... How can peop1le work with this?

alex86fire

Seriously,

I am trying to rig a simple prop.

I went into weight map edit mode to edit the weight. Holding alt to remove weight is not really working where the weight is 100%. Have to smooth the margins first to be able to remove them and so on....

This is taking forever so I thought maybe fill with weight would work.

Of course not, if you want to add, fill to 100%, it's easy.

If you want to say 0 to fill everything with 0 so it removes what already exists of course it doesn't work.

Thought next, ok, I'll just clear the weight maps and start with cleared ones.

Clearing was easy.

When I add a new general weight map though it hides the object.

Seriously, how can anyone work with this and how is this not fixed yet?

I got so annoyed I had to clse Daz and leave the computer not to damage anything.

 

Richard Haseltine

Is the bone a child bone or the root bone? Remember that weights are nomalised - the total weight on a vertex, across all bones, must add up to 100%.

alex86fire

Thank you for the answer Richard. 

It is very frustrating when you are trying to do something and the program doesn't respond in any way. neither doing what you are trying or with a message of any kind letting you know it can't be done.

I had also not found anything about the 100% in the documentation but at least it clears that up.

I have a new question now.

I create the figure from the Figure setup with General weight selected.

When I first create it, the twist effect is as I want but the other two are not:

If I convert the figure to general weight from the scene menu:" edit->rigging, the twist becomes something completely different:

I initially thought I could alter the twist by edditing the weight map but since I don't want the other bones to influence the movement of this part I can't modify this.

Any ideas about what to do?

Another problem is zooming. If I zoom in too much I get this clipping and I don't know how to top from getting it and increase the level of zoom possible (this is about the size of a human palm so not that small).

WendyLuvsCatz

I am not a skilled rigger so I make life easy on myself by naming vertices etc in my modeling program (usually Carrara)

then you can just select the group and fill it, mind you that is only good for rigid things I pretty much suck in DAZ studio doing soft bends

alex86fire

WendyLuvsCatz said:

I am not a skilled rigger so I make life easy on myself by naming vertices etc in my modeling program (usually Carrara)

then you can just select the group and fill it, mind you that is only good for rigid things I pretty much suck in DAZ studio doing soft bends

I do have face groups selected and named.

Unfortunately this is supposed to be a sling, so not rigid. This means the bending has to be smooth. What I don't understand at the moment:

1. Why does the twist go from first image where is correct to second image which is totally wrong.

2. How can I get a proper zoom level

3. How to achieve a smooth transition in bend with weights, they appear to really distort the geometry.

Richard Haseltine

In general weight mapping each bone has a single map, if you want the twist to have a different behaviour from the bend/side-to-side then you need two maps (this is why Genesis 3 and 8 have bend and twist bones for some body parts, using proeprty cloning to enable the properties to be controlled from a single bone). Tri-ax will let you have separate weights for each transform, but that is elss widely supported outside DS.

Zoom can be tricky, sometiem using Frame helps but not always.

You can smooth weight maps - either with a brush mode or using a command on selected geometry from the right-click>Weight Editing menu.

alex86fire

Richard Haseltine said:

In general weight mapping each bone has a single map, if you want the twist to have a different behaviour from the bend/side-to-side then you need two maps (this is why Genesis 3 and 8 have bend and twist bones for some body parts, using proeprty cloning to enable the properties to be controlled from a single bone). Tri-ax will let you have separate weights for each transform, but that is elss widely supported outside DS.

Zoom can be tricky, sometiem using Frame helps but not always.

You can smooth weight maps - either with a brush mode or using a command on selected geometry from the right-click>Weight Editing menu.

Thank you for your answer.

My problem with the twist is that by default, if I don't add any weights, it's already the way I want it. Once I add weights it isn't anymore. I am not sure how the weight should look so that the twist is like in my first screenshot (that is by default before I add weights).

For the zoom, in the end I decided to scale up my model to 300-500% while I work on it. I will scale it back down at the end and that's it. It works great and can't find any disadvantages to it.

For smoothing the weight maps I found the brush but it still kind of distorts the mesh. What I am trying to rig is basically a rope. Couldn't find a good way to make the corners even with smoothing.

I am thinking that maybe I add a base bone that takes a % of the weight from all other bones so that the other bones have less than 100% influence, maybe that makes it smoother.

If you know how I could do a smooth turning of a rope please let me know. I currently have bones in like 60 cm of rope so number of bones shouldn't be the issue.

Richard Haseltine

A newly created weight map doesn't usually have any values on child bones, it's all on the root bone. If you don't create with Geenral Weight mapping what do you use?

alex86fire

Richard Haseltine said:

A newly created weight map doesn't usually have any values on child bones, it's all on the root bone. If you don't create with Geenral Weight mapping what do you use?

I  used Parametric(Legacy) in figure setup.

Leana

alex86fire said:

Richard Haseltine said:

A newly created weight map doesn't usually have any values on child bones, it's all on the root bone. If you don't create with Geenral Weight mapping what do you use?

I  used Parametric(Legacy) in figure setup.

Parametric rigging doesn't use weight maps...

alex86fire

Leana said:

alex86fire said:

Richard Haseltine said:

A newly created weight map doesn't usually have any values on child bones, it's all on the root bone. If you don't create with Geenral Weight mapping what do you use?

I  used Parametric(Legacy) in figure setup.

Parametric rigging doesn't use weight maps...

I there a way to replicate the twist from the parametric rigging with weight maps?

Richard Haseltine

No, parametric rigging uses the position of a vertex relative to angled lines emanating from the centre point, and optionally relative to two spheres, to calculate the weight it should have - hence the name parametric, since it takes just a few numbers to describe the joint. If you want to be able to handle twist separately but have weight maps then your best option is TriAx weighting, though that does mean a lot more weights to keep track of (ober per axis, plus scale and optional sets of bulge maps which for each bend can be used to bump out the inner side of a bend to make it look more natural).