Weight Map Brush issue

meipe

It happened to me before that building or retouching WM on some follower messed some other WM on the same follower. So, I just opened the geometry file of an older save of the follower, copied the good WM, and pasted it on the messed geometry file. Peace.

Now I'm experiencing the 0.2 version of a similar bug, while working on a geo-graft: when I paint on a WM, adding power to some vertices, the same vertices are loosing power on four other WM. The first WM is to give a global movement inherited from the root figure (for this purpose the graft has a node with the same name of the corresponding one on the root figure), the four other WM are for the graft bones (they move some details of the mesh).

Pasting WM from the geometry files do not work in this case... Am I doing something wrong?

Thank you for any help or suggestion!

Richard Haseltine

Weight maps are normalised (by default, you can turn this off but it is trickier to work with). The ttoal weights on a vertex (for each axis, if using TriAx) must add up to 1 so adding weight to one map will subtract it from another.

meipe

Thank you Richard!  Unfortunately, for some reason, even turning 'normalized' off do not solve the problem, hum.

Thomas Windar

Can you perhaps show us the error you are having with a Screenshot or give more info about the item itself? It's hard to give any specific solutions with just general info.

 

Anyway - Parent bone does NOT REQUIRE a Weight Map if its CHILDREN BONES contain weight maps. The parent bone (in this case - your root bone) moves all of its Weight Maps + the weight maps of the children bones. So even if the root bone is empty in the end - it will still function.

Also - I strongly urge to keep Normalize on Auto. Weird glitches might occur without it, unless you are fully aware of what you are doing.

meipe

This is a very simplified drawing of the graft... its bones are in red, the ones of the parent figure are in black. Problem is when I move the root on the parent, it has to move flawlessly the graft as a whole, but I need WM for the detail bone too. And if I paint WM on the Root, it'll substract value on the detail bone WM and vice-versa.

Thomas I'm not sure I understand what you are saying? I assure you that if I paint WM on the detail bone, the bending on the root will still work, but looks ugly and urges retouching...

Thomas Windar

We have a bit of a miscommunication problem here.

When you have a figure - the Root Bone will contain 100% Weight Influence in it. The Weight Mapp will be fully red.
Painting a map on a different bone will REMOVE influence from the root bone and give it to the selected bone.
This process works in reverse as well. If you paint Weights on the Root Bone, the Weight Maps will be sucked out of the bones containing weights and given to the Root bone.

This is not a "bug" - this is intended functionality.

If you go to the Node Weight Map Brush - you will find the Normalize tab there. If you turn Rotation Weights to "OFF" you will now be able to paint your weights without draining the other bones.
Be aware - this is not recommended unless you know what you are doing. Results may be odd.

 

Anyway - back to your problem.
That drawing tells me nothing. It shows what you WANT to perform, but not the state the figure is in.
How are the bones parented?
What are their weights maps?
How does the problem area look when bent?

If I was to take a guess:
Make sure that the Graft Detail Bone is parented to the bone responsible for main movement (in this case, it is probably root, judging by your drawing)
Afterwards be aware that the Root Bone moves everything according to its Weight Map and its Child Bone Weight Maps. This means that even if the Root Bone had completely no Weight mapping, it will still move its Child Bones and if they contain Weight Maps - those parts will be moved.

In this case, you would want to have Weight Mapping on the Segment Bone 1 and on the Graft Detail Bone. Even without weight maps on the Root Bone, it will move the whole Graft with it.

If you find weird bending - you can use the Smooth Brush to correct it.

meipe

The bones are parented this way:

Parent figure:

Main actor bone->Root bone->Segment bone 1->Segment bone2, etc. [all are weight-mapped, X,Y,Z,scale]

Graft:

Main actor bone->Root bone->Segment bone 1

                                              ->Detail bone

So the detail bone is a child of the root, as well as the Segment 1. [Root, Segment bone1 and Detail are weight-mapped X,Y,Z,scale]

Problem exists with a couple of axis (Y,Z): the ss&twist is weird in the detail area because the WM value of the mesh moved by the detail bone is lower than the value of the surrounding vertices. Using the smooth brush on the root WM is a great solution... that sucks out power from the detail WM.

Yes, I tried to swith off the normalized in the tab, and the result was getting even wilder, as you were warning. I tried to manually paste ideal root and detail WM in a geometry file and setting its 'normalized' flags to 'false', but it wasn't good either... I tried to remove  the 'root' WM... the mesh get deformed in a horrible way. The only thing I'm able to do is to give only 1/2 power to the detail WM, letting more power to the root.

 

 

Thomas Windar

I am afraid I cannot help you then. 
Without seeing the problem area and weight map distribution I am afraid I cannot suggest a solution.

Perhaps someone else will help.