If someone has some information sources for rigging shoulders, hips, elbows etc. correctly, I would be very interested in finding them. I think I’ve gone through enough topology lessons to be quite sure that my mesh is good enough for armature deformation, but weights give me hard time. Usually when I get some pose working, it causes another to go wrong. There is little point using armatures at all if every pose needs sculpts.
I’d even buy training which would be focused only on the hardest parts.
This kind of video makes me believe that there’s a huge conspiracy to prevent me from finding the correct information…
That Maya rig test uses corrective blendshapes, also known as shape keys. Those results are note achievable in Maya with simple bone-weighting, nor is it possible in Blender for the same reason. To get the same results in Blender you will have to do the same thing that is being done in Maya: create bone-driven shape keys for the muscles in those poses.
Yes, I understand that basically we have everything we need, but there is a huge gap in information.
Look, I have used Blender several years, actively from 2.4x versions. I am still learning something new every day. But in rigging and in animating/deforming meshes generally, the information available is very scarce and badly presented, even erroneous.
For example, there are only two types of shoulder meshes that I know of that deform correctly when arm is lifted. There are many, many tutorials which present entirely unanimatable meshes.
But mesh topology is something which one can see from good examples. Mesh weighting IMO is not. We all know there are good ways, because many of animations we have all seen work do well. Some presented on this very site are really good.
But if some of these masters would go into details and show how it’s done, I’d buy a video course about that.
It can be hard to find what you want sometimes, I had the same problem in the past.
I would try help you rig something if you had a mesh to work from.
There are many video tutorials about assigning weights, and shape key drivers.
But when it comes to joints like shoulders and hips, it is hard to setup, and people have different methods.
google for : corrective shape keys, and: stretch to constraint, and: shrinkwrap modifier. between the three you should be able to get a completely accurate shoulder deformation.