suggestions on how to copy weights between two adjacent surfaces using ngSkinTools?

[Gerard van Ommen Kloeke]

Hello. I'm wondering if ngSkinTools can be used to copy and paste weights between edges of two separate surfaces? I can use maya's copy weights but thought there might be something a little more elegant in ngTools?

Best wishes

Gerard. 

[viktoras]

hi,

Won't be a one button solution, but what about...

0. let's say you have layers beak1, beak2 on the beak mesh, and head1, head2 on the head mesh; you want to copy edge from beak to head;

1. ngSkinTools "tools"-"transfer weights" from beak to head; choose to keep existing layers;

2. head layers now look like this

beak2
beak1

head2
head1

3. "merge down" beak2 onto beak1

4. rename beak1 to "beak weights transfered"

5. checkpoint: your head layers now look like

beak weights transfered

head2
head1

6. now, paint mask on the "beak weights transfered" layer, so it only covers the edge where it touches the beak.

should be done by now; if you need to refine weights on the beak, after doing so, repeat steps 1,2,3, only merge down to "beak weights transfered", so you don't have to repaint the mask.

Now that we did it with the existing ngSkinTools functionality, a question.. Would it make sense to have something like "auto transfer" layer, where when you paint weights on one mesh, it automatically transfers to dedicated layer on another mesh? Given that it would be pretty hard to implement, and most probably would further slow down paint performance? How often are you in a situation when needing to do transfers like this?

I haven't rigged a character in a while, but from what I remember, there's always this belt you need to transfer from pants, or shirt that needs to match the pelvis.. just wondering if you guys do a lot of back and forth action, or just everything in single pass (e.g. get body perfect, and just copy weights on to props).

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Viktoras Makauskas

www.neglostyti.com - www.ngskintools.com

[Breno Azevedo]

Hi Viktoras. Yeah, transfering weights from body to parts seem straightforward but in practice it isn't. If you don't have exactly overlapping points (which's rarely the case) there'll always be mesh interpenetration when the joints rotate a lot - like in a torso forward bend, for instance. Best option there is to manually adjust those weights to minimize this nasty side effect, there's no automated way to do it that I know of.

Although I'm a component developer myself I can't think of any algorithm that'd help with that, to be honest, but if you have some idea it'd be amazing :)