Painting weights
 

i need help...i've been having so many troubles painting weights on my character...i've got the head, neck, and hands deforming fine...but when i rotate the arm, i get this really bad deformation, and nothing i do seems to work...it just makes it worse...are there any good tutorials out there? i'd like some video tutorials if possible, and i don't mind paying...but painting weights seems to be lost on me :(

Mt McKinley's rigging tutorial has some very good info on weight painting. I had books on it, but McKinley's tutorial explained it in PLAIN ENGLISH, and I was up & weight painting in no time! I HIGHLY recommend it, and you can download it right here!

Weight painting alone may not get rid of ALL bad deformations. Adding joints may help (ie a ribcage), but for arms & legs one effective method is to add blend shapes. Basically, you duplicate the offending geometry (ie the arm) and create a blend shape. You then set the blend shape slider to 100% and start pulling vertices on the duplicate arm until it looks the way you want it to. You can then integrate the blend shape into normal arm movements through set driven key or expressions.

Hope this helps!

yeah, that tutorial's great, really has helped a lot already! :D

Aye, weight painting is most certainly tricky...I seem to get my arms and legs to obey, but I suffer huge nightmares on the abdominals and fingers...:headbang:

Just stick with it ^_^

my arms are working great...neck, head, mouth, finger, everything...but the legs are massively tricky...trying to even it out is hard...i had one leg looking and deforming great...then i go to the other leg, and it look horrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrribl e!
but i'll try a few more things to see how i can get it...painting weights is a lot of work, but it's cool to see the effect of taking time on it.

im having the same trouble with my character!! what is the tutorial? where can i download it from?

thanx

Go to Video Tutorials->Archive->Character Project - Rigging

It's not really completed though :( he says he's going to talk about things, but those videos aren't there...and some stuff is skipped. But it still is pretty cool. Shows how to paint weights, set up the skeleton, create blend shapes, etc. Good stuff..also, under

Video Tutorials->Animation->Rigging for the low poly man

You get to see how kurt skins, and binds, and paints weights...that one is a complete tutorial set, i believe, but i haven't finished it, so i'm not 100% certain. Kurt's good about showing everything he does though.