Erasing Joint Influence ?

[The Christopher]

When painting weights, how do you erase the weight / vertices that are effecting a particular joint ? It should be as simple as the erase tool in the joint paint weight editor, but with the joint selected and the erase tool active, nothing is erasing ?

[stephenkmann]

use scale set to 0 

and you can also remove the joint influence under the skin menu  edit smooth skin 

On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 8:31 AM, The Christopher <crestchr...@gmail.com> wrote:

When painting weights, how do you erase the weight / vertices that are effecting a particular joint ? It should be as simple as the erase tool in the joint paint weight editor, but with the joint selected and the erase tool active, nothing is erasing ?

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[Crest Christopher]

Sorry, how do you quickly get back to painting joint weights ? I find myself constantly going to the "paint weight tool" and my mesh doesn't show the weights ?

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[stephenkmann]

just select the geo, 

skin --> edit smooth skin --> paint skin weights tool 

then select a joint you want to edit in the tool window 

 if you are still having issues, reset the options when the tool opens.

[Phinnaeus OConnor]

Have any of you riggers out there used geodesic voxel skinning in Maya 2015?

I've got a facial rig setup using seperate joints and it keeps ignoring the joints around the lips area, I've placed all the joints inside the mesh and upped the resolution to 1024.

When I check in the paint weights tool the renegade joints are simply not there.

all the joints have unique names and I've up and down streamed them to check there is nothing funky attached

Is it a bug, any clues, anyone?

poc


Phinnaeus O'Connor Ltd
3D Animation for TV and Film



https://vimeo.com/user5376333/videos





--------------------------------------------
On Fri, 26/9/14, stephenkmann <stephe...@gmail.com> wrote:

Subject: Re: [maya_he3d] Erasing Joint Influence ?
To: "maya...@googlegroups.com" <maya...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Friday, 26 September, 2014, 15:21

[Crest Christopher]

Thank you very much.  One other question, make that two other questions :)

When painting weight maps for a joint, how do you overcome an influence of a joint effecting part of the mesh which you can't see it's influence, regardless how much you paint erase the area ? Also how do you move an individual joint ?

I read you can use the insert key, unfortunately the keyboard I'm using doesn't have an insert key !

[bd]

http://www.ngskintools.com

This tool is a life saver. It's so easy to manage skinning and controlling what affects what since it uses layering.

Take care with Maya 2015 and ascii files. Tends to crash.

[Crest Christopher]

Hi bd, is this tool directed for me, or Phinnaeus O'Connor ? If for me,
thank you very much !

[stephenkmann]

you never really want to move joints post skinning, but if you have to.. you can use edit skin --> move skinned joint

 and you should check out the component editor to see where all your weight it going

-=s

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[Crest Christopher]

I like to check what vertices are effected by what joint, and at times a point or two or three moves when moving a joint, I paint and paint in the area that I know being effected and the vertices continue to move.
I'll try these suggestions, thanks !

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[Crest Christopher]

I should be able to select the mesh then click load components in the component editor and the skin weights are shown, that isn't the case, seems a little of a fight.



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[David Johnson]

If you are using erase or replace with zero weight, then I you are doing it wrong.

Good advice for new users is to only use "add". ( I suspect you are a new user, and I mean no offense by that.)

If you want to remove influence from one joint, think about where you want that influence to go - because it has to go somewhere. Lock every joint except the one you want to remove and the one you want to put it on, then flood the one you want to put it one with weight=1.

Also you should read about the "prune small weights" and "move weights to influence" menu items.

But don't leave it too long before you try ngSkinTools. I really hope that one day it completely replaces maya's native skin weighting system. Currently I use it for about 97% of my skinning tasks. In fact painting dq weights is the only reason I ever touch maya's native skin weights tool.

David

[matt estela]

What he said. I wrote this up in a long winded wiki entry a long time ago (10 years! Egads...)

http://www.tokeru.com/t/bin/view/Maya/MayaRigging#Why_is_paint_weights_so_difficul

[Milos Vukotic]

Matt, you wiki entry on this subject is brilliant. I always loved analogies, the best way to describe things, and I think your analogy was super simple and clear, I honestly believe that every newbie 3D animator should read that post of yours.

Now from my perspective, a way cg software industry could get around this is by simply making the first step of skinning absolutely rigid, without any transitions between bones or values between 0 and 1 (i.e. each bone can only fully influence a certain vertex or completely ignore it), and then introduce a completely separate process focusing only the "transitioning areas" (areas where bones meet and are supposed to share weights among each other).

In such a process a user would define the midpoint between those areas by drawing some kind of curve on a mesh surface, that will be positioned approximately where the the user wants weights to meet at equal values (0.5 from one bone and 0.5 from other, or 0.33 from three bones respectively, etc...) as well as drawing curves to mark the ares where he wants the rigid part to stop and transitioning part to begin.

The rest would be calculated automatically, and then a user could define how each map inside of each "transitioning area" should be mapped (linear, smooth, spline etc...) and even have the ability to define it precisely with a ramp or such.

Now I know it's always easier said than done, but hey I'm just thinking out loud here :)

[stephenkmann]

Milos, some people do indeed work that way. 

set your number of influences to 1  and then paint adjust to taste afterwards. 

or run smooth flood per joint. 

Also, Crest, if you can't paint a weight off, you may have "maintain max influences" turned on  ..  I think it's on by default, which as far as I know it mostly important for game dev.  to keep that setting.   but outside of that, can be a suprising pain in the arse.

 basically what happens, is the weight system will always make sure that the weights are split between the given number of influences.. so if you have a tiny bit of weight on a third joint, it will maintain that.. or jump it to another joint.. ( i think the default is 3 ) so shoulder / elbow / wrist.. or what happens in most cases. elbow/wrist/ other side of body on some random joint you forgot even existed. 

and David,  i agree with the only use "ADD" , for starters, but I often use scale 0 to take weights off areas that I know I never want the weight to be. 

-=s

 

[Crest Christopher]

Suppose I have a joint weight highlighted and I select all the vertices effecting that weight and only that weight, how do I make sure other vertices which belong to other joints does not effect the joint weight vertices which are currently selected within the component editor ? Is it as simple as entering zero for the other joints in the component editor, for a list of vertices ?

If so I did just that and the vertices for the joint weight I have selected shift when entering zero for another other vertices for any other joint. 

Maintain Max Influences is a slider which is set at it's default of five, it isn't a toggle switch. 

Why do you suggest the two tools "prune small weights" and "move weights to influence"  ? I read up on prune small weights, it appears to rid of excess vertices belonging to the joint ? Move weights to influence, I didn't get to work straight off, I have to tinker with it more.

[Stephen]

Maintain max influences is a toggle on the skin cluster.  Select the bound surface. Open the attribute editor And click on the smooth bind tab.  

  The slider you are mentioning. Is the number of influences.   If you have it set to 5. It will try and force the influence number to 5 joints.  

The component editor is a list of all your influences on a selected vertex  

 The component editor has some issues.  

 You can shift select each column. But it will fail if you have "preserve component selection" turned on in the preferences .    

 Also once you select all your columns you want to cntrl select the blank space between "lock " and the vertex weights.   Then you can type in a value. 

 

 Alternatively you can use the slider at the bottom after among your selection.    

-=s 

[Crest Christopher]

I opened the attribute editor and never saw a smooth bind tab ?

[stephenkmann]

skinCluster 

[Crest Christopher]

Thanks, I turned off maintain max influences and I'll keep it off most of the time, that didn't stop me from running into another problem.

The Paint skin weight tool has an option to select the joint, then select the vertices that are effecting the joint weight this is great, unfortunately when I erase the vertices that are effecting a weight area of the mesh I don't want to have effected, those vertices get erased from the weight, but if I immediately select the same joint weight, those vertices reappear as if they were never erased ?

[Crest Christopher]

Thanks, I turned off maintain max influences and I'll keep it off most of the time, that didn't stop me from running into another problem.

The Paint skin weight tool has an option to select the joint, then select the vertices that are effecting the joint weight this is great, unfortunately when I erase the vertices that are effecting a weight area of the mesh I don't want to have effected, those vertices get erased from the weight, but if I immediately select the same joint weight, those vertices reappear as if they were never erased ?

stephenkmann

Tuesday, September 30, 2014 9:31 AM

skinCluster 

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Crest Christopher

Tuesday, September 30, 2014 12:15 AM

I opened the attribute editor and never saw a smooth bind tab ?

Stephen

Monday, September 29, 2014 10:31 PM

Maintain max influences is a toggle on the skin cluster.  Select the bound surface. Open the attribute editor And click on the smooth bind tab.  

  The slider you are mentioning. Is the number of influences.   If you have it set to 5. It will try and force the influence number to 5 joints.  

The component editor is a list of all your influences on a selected vertex  

 The component editor has some issues.  

 You can shift select each column. But it will fail if you have "preserve component selection" turned on in the preferences .    

 Also once you select all your columns you want to cntrl select the blank space between "lock " and the vertex weights.   Then you can type in a value. 

 

 Alternatively you can use the slider at the bottom after among your selection.    

-=s 

On Sep 29, 2014, at 6:18 PM, Crest Christopher <crestchr...@gmail.com> wrote:

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Crest Christopher

Monday, September 29, 2014 6:18 PM

Suppose I have a joint weight highlighted and I select all the vertices effecting that weight and only that weight, how do I make sure other vertices which belong to other joints does not effect the joint weight vertices which are currently selected within the component editor ? Is it as simple as entering zero for the other joints in the component editor, for a list of vertices ?

If so I did just that and the vertices for the joint weight I have selected shift when entering zero for another other vertices for any other joint. 

Maintain Max Influences is a slider which is set at it's default of five, it isn't a toggle switch. 

Why do you suggest the two tools "prune small weights" and "move weights to influence"  ? I read up on prune small weights, it appears to rid of excess vertices belonging to the joint ? Move weights to influence, I didn't get to work straight off, I have to tinker with it more.

stephenkmann

Monday, September 29, 2014 10:48 AM

Milos, some people do indeed work that way. 

set your number of influences to 1  and then paint adjust to taste afterwards. 

or run smooth flood per joint. 

Also, Crest, if you can't paint a weight off, you may have "maintain max influences" turned on  ..  I think it's on by default, which as far as I know it mostly important for game dev.  to keep that setting.   but outside of that, can be a suprising pain in the arse.

 basically what happens, is the weight system will always make sure that the weights are split between the given number of influences.. so if you have a tiny bit of weight on a third joint, it will maintain that.. or jump it to another joint.. ( i think the default is 3 ) so shoulder / elbow / wrist.. or what happens in most cases. elbow/wrist/ other side of body on some random joint you forgot even existed. 

and David,  i agree with the only use "ADD" , for starters, but I often use scale 0 to take weights off areas that I know I never want the weight to be. 

-=s

 

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http://smannimation.blogspot.com/
http://nymayausersgroup.blogspot.com/
http://smann3d.blogspot.com/