Weight painting problem

Hello. I started animating in summer, but now i have a problem creating new characters with armature. I use weight paint, no parenting. (it worked that way). Problem is shown in the video. Please help. BTW video is in 2.66 but i have tried 2.63-2.69 and they have the same problem. So, how do i fix it?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnYl9I4bzn0&feature=youtu.be

Your link gives me


better now?

Yes, it is available now.
Is there any particular reason why you are against parenting? It comes with automatic weights and then can easily be edited either by painting or by using vertex groups, also editing them, if needed.

Sorry, you seem to have got to a certain point in creating your armature then a big PLEASE HELP sign came on the screen and then the video ended. I haven’t a clue what your particular problem is, and I am not inclined to spend the time watching your video over and over again to try to figure it out.

Why not just tell people what the problem is? Say what you did, what you are trying to accomplish, and what isn’t working for you.

Eppo: Well, parenting with automatic weight never works (at lest for me).
Orinico: OK, when i select armature in pose mode, select object go to weight paint, the armature won’t switch to pose mode and i can’t select a certain bone, it’ll select the whole armature. (by the way, you can pause the video) I hope this is ok for you

EDIT: it still remains in weight paint, with whole armature selected

If parenting with automatic weights “never works” then you are always doing something wrong. From the sloppy video I’d guess that the problem is asymmetrical armatures or meshes, but who knows, since you haven’t really shown us anything? Could also be a problem of bad topology, unapplied rotations and scales or a number of other things. In any case, if you can’t get automatic weights to work at all, you need to find out what you’re doing wrong there instead of just trying to do armatures some other wrong way instead.

You seem to be attempting to do weight painting without vertex groups, which is like trying to pour water into the absence of a cup. Weight painting is just the visual representation of the influence of vertex groups. You need an armature modifier and vertex groups with the same names as the bones for an armature to work. You can’t just make an armature and start weight painting, because you don’t have anything to weight paint.

Horseman: Ok i will go a hundred times again through tutorials. I didn’t know about vertex groups and now I’m really confused, because i’have already made some models the same way. by the way can you make me a list how to start automatic weights? thanks

In the video you selected the first item in Ctrl-P menu. Object to object parenting is all that does. No Armature Modifier was created for the mesh object. You have to at least select Armature Deform in the Ctrl-P menu. That sets up an Armature Modifier for the mesh object and the vertex groups will be created as you weight paint.

Shortcuts and Weight Painting are quick or automated ways of doing things. Learn how to set it up manually*. It’s just an Armature Modifier, Vertex Groups, and Vertex Weighting. The latter two usually have to be tweaked on manually for best results anyway.

*Edit: Once you know how it all works the shortcuts/automation are just time-savers and you’ll know how to fix and refine the results they give you.

-LP

Moved from “Basics & Interface” to “Animation and Rigging”

Detailed Steps for Rigging and Skinning a Character with Automatic Weights:*

Do not skip steps. I don’t care how fun step 11 looks right now. Do everything carefully and deliberately and check each step before moving on to the next. Don’t make assumptions about how things will work later, and you won’t have to come back and fix the thing that you broke by assuming and rushing.

  • Good topology. I cannot stress this enough. Your character will never deform quite right unless the topology is there to allow it to bend, slide, curve and bulge in the right places. Start here and practice until you get it right: http://cgcookie.com/blender/cgc-courses/learning-mesh-topology-collection/

  • Mesh Normals and Geometry Mistakes. Make sure your polygons are all facing the right direction and your mesh doesn’t have any irregularities. This is technically part of step 1, but deserves its own step because it’s more of a bug check. Check for internal faces. Check for n-gons. If possible, everything should be made of quads, with maybe a couple of tris at this point. Make sure there are no duplicate vertices (W>Remove Doubles). Correct the model’s normals by selecting all and hitting Ctrl-N.

  • No Object-level transforms. Check your object scaling and rotations in the number panel (N-key in the 3d Viewport). These values are not intended (for the most part) as methods of editing your model. They are (mostly) for animation. You can animate the size and rotation of a model by keyframing these values. But you’re not doing that. You’re letting an armature do all the rotation, scaling, bending and other animation processes for you. So before you take another step, Rotation values need to all be 0 and Scale values need to all be 1. Select your mesh object(s) and your armature object (which should be in Object Mode too right now) and hit Ctrl-A>Rotation and Scale.

  • No Unnecessary Modifiers. You should be completely finished messing with your model’s overall structure at this point. Apply your Mirror Modifier if you have one. That means going to Object Mode and hitting the Apply button on that modifier. Your mesh will now be a whole, two-sided thing.

  • Finish your Armature. I usually break this rule by adding helper bones and facial expression controls later, but generally the best practice is to just wrap it up first.
    [LIST=1|INDENT=1]

  • Name your bones properly. If your armature is made entirely of bone.0002, bone.0003, etc. you are making your life unnecessarily difficult. Give them descriptive names. Note in the name which ones are deforming bones and which are just controllers. Give them names that can be mirrored (forearm_L and forearm_R for instance).

  • Get your constraints working properly. Test them out and make sure everything moves the way you want it to in the armature. This will give you less crap to fix in the finished, rigged model.

  • Turn off Deform in bones that don’t need it. Your IK targets, pole targets, controller bones that other bones just follow, none of these are intended to deform the mesh. Look at the bone’s properties. Don’t let bones deform if they don’t need to.

  • Line it all up. Your armature and your character mesh are both in the same location and position, right?

  • If using a pre-fab armature like Rigify, get it right. For Rigify, you should only ever need to edit the Meta-Rig, but do not use it beyond this step. Generate the Rigify Armature from the Meta-Rig. Don’t use the Meta-Rig as your deforming armature.

  • Go back to Step 1. Check your work.

  • Put your Armature in Pose Mode. Make sure it’s in its base pose by clearing everything out. Select all, Alt-G, Alt-R, Alt-S to clear any location, rotation or scaling you might have done to any bones.

  • Select your character mesh object in Object Mode

  • Shift-Select any bone in your Armature

  • Ctrl-P>With Automatic Weights

  • Tweak. With the armature still in Pose Mode, put the character mesh in Weight Paint Mode. You can either browse the menu of vertex groups, or you can select each deform bone to display and edit that vertex group’s weights. Put your character in some poses. Start with the basics, then try something weird. Get it into extreme poses. Move it a long distance using the Master/Root bone. Bend it over. See where some vertices are being left behind. There are always a few, especially in the head. Fix those weights. Look for places where it bends unrealistically. Fix those weights. If you’ve followed all these steps properly, there should be only a few details left for you to fix. You shouldn’t need to make major changes to these weights, but you will have to do a few little things. If something is extremely wrong, like a whole arm isn’t working or something, go back to Step 1 and figure out what you skipped.
    [/LIST]

*You asked for it.

Great Checklist, K Horseman :smiley:

(now if you could just expand on “Look for places where it bends unrealistically. Fix those weights.” with some suggested techniques…)

Thank you.

As I’ve alluded to in another thread, I’m working on a rigging tutorial where I’ll cover such things. Probably be done within the next week.

But basically, watch your own joints. They don’t fold like you’re crimping a hose. This is the most common bad deformation I’ve seen, and it can usually be helped by creating a longer gradient of weight from one bone across the fold. For instance, an upper arm bone could have more light influence extending further down the forearm, which would pull the mesh up toward the upper arm in a more realistic way. Auto-weights won’t do this quite right in most cases, so you’ll need to fix that. The tweaking stage is a bit of black magic sometimes. You often do just sort of feel around for what’s not quite right and attempt different weight-painting until it’s better. Use low brush influence and weight and take your time.