Character rigging problems :(

[mrpotato]

Hi guys! i hope not to bore anyone too much with this small "story..."

im having some problem while rigging a character to the skeleton...
Head, basically : skined with smooth skin,it seem to work ok,Ive created clusters for small head movements like eye-blinking etc... neither geometry nor the Clusters are parented to the root skeleton,but im having quite a lot problems with the moving or scaling of the skeleton, it seem that areas with clusters behave in a very unpredicted way, i really dont know how this clusters should be parented with the rest of the objects so everything will stay ok while i make any transformation to the main root...
Other problem im having is with some vertex of the eyes...they are afected by 2 clusters and headbone, neighbour cv behave ok, but there are some of them they dont seem to behave as they should, i paint their wheight and its useless,they seem not afected, but this happens just with this CV ,i edit membership and something weird happens,the script editor gives me this error:

/ Error: Cannot edit set membership since history node 'polySplit45' modifies geometry topology. Change the Node State of the node to "HasNoEffect" to edit set membership. //

Im afraid im a bit lost here

KLets move to the body.... tha characters body is built inside a cloth(of course,no skin was modeled),much like the F1 drivers cloth... well ive used Smooth skin here too (maybe not good idea??) the thing is when i paint skin wheights starts the CHAOS... ive read something about this in previous post but really i didnt expect to have sucha mess, i attach the skeleton using just 3 bones iinfluence, wich gives a good start, im trying to paint weight the shoulders and because of the Weight normalization everything starts messing... i take out influences of the forearm and back arm but it starts getting influences even in the finger bones! really mad at the end of the day i finish using the component editor and givin each vertex the proper numerical values... Im i missing something here or this paint bones weight tool is nothing but CRAP? ive even tried disabling normalization but things are worst later as i finish always with vertex with less than 1 or more than 1 value of influence... I dont understan why is so difficult for the software to reorganice properly this wheight.. i mean if i have a CV just ove my hip under the union of the forearm and body, why when i put influence of the forearm to 0 insted to reasign according to distance and give saya 100 percent of its value to a bone of the column it has to reditribute it with the sooo far bones of the fingers......Comeon ALias is it soo dificult?another annoying thing it happened to me is that even if i use the component editor to give a EXACT value most time it doesnt , it aproximates but i have to tipe it like 20 times so its nearly there, the only solution ive found this is to disable weight normalization, give a value of 0 to all bones influence to this CV, then give a value of 1 to the main bone influence and then reactivate weight normalization,and start playing with the secondary main influence bone.. but its really tedious
Last but not least... Artisan MAP exports.... is this a JOKE or im missing myself something here too? i mean,i pick the left face for example, export the map , import back ( replace, 1 value)and tatachaaan, when it doesnt crash it imports "something" similar, but with all the values changes, some a lot others not so.... ive tried with the Export paint bones weight and paint weight too(for some clusters) with no luck, all are the same... the problem is, ive modeled just half a head hoping not to find all this mess and its now 1 Oclock AM and doing it all again....

Anyway, i dont wanna sound like blaming Alias, im sure most of the problem is my lack of knowledge in some ares,but to be honest my impresions of all this "cutting edge" tools for the charecter rigging are reaally reaally bad.....

By the way im Using the sooo called "ROCK solid "MAYA 4 but thats another biiig and painfull story

Thanks a lot for Your patience and please forgive my english and my bad mood of today

[gmask]

You have to parent any clusters tot he nearest joints or they of course will not follow the root node.

g

[mrpotato]

first of all Thanks For Your answer

In reply to:
You have to parent any clusters tot he nearest joints or they of course will not follow the root node.
g

Ive already done so,but it doesnt seem to work ,i have for example this cluster which controls the blinking of left eye, the eyeballs are childs of the headbone wich controls all the head from uperlips to the top, they move properly,ive parented this cluster too as children of the headbone and even if the "C" icon moves with the headbone and eyeball as it sould, heavy and unwanted deformations happens, as if the movement of those CVs of the clusters where moving twice more than the rest of the head,I think it has to be the way cluster have been made, ive created them not being relative, so i thought i should have not parented them to any bone nor anything in the scene .The problem is that even in this way, when i move the head the eyelips move a bit too, specially inextreme positions,its really frustrating...

I would like to show You some pictures, but i dont know how to post an Image here.. Sorry about that

[flys]

Sounds like a deformation order problem. Try moving the cluster under the bind in your deformation list.... If you put it on after the bind it will recieve a doucle transformation (one from the bind and then again fron the cluster).
Hope it helps.

Dave K.
www.geocities.com/davekstuff
thedavecave@hotmail.com

[mrpotato]

That was it, deformation orders,Problem solved, Thanks a lot!

any ideas for the rest of the problems? my biggest one is the fact that i have to atach both sides seamless, ive combined both sides and the merge edges... but because all of this is been done after skining when i rotate the bones some polys move strangely in the merged faces(maybe a poltergeist in my computer??)... I guess the solution for all this will be to deatach skin ,merge both surfaces,kill history, and then reattach... this will be ok for me as long as the Export bones weight map works properly,which is not the case so i see my self reweighting all the face

Anyone knows easyer way of doing this?

Thx again for ur time!

[autumn]

This should work if you want to re-weight the new binding the same as the old one once you've deleted the history and fixed the things you mentioned. First save the current scene as a new revision. Now, just bind the new version using the same joints as before (must be the same joints), import the old version into your scene.......select the "old" bound mesh...shift select the "new" version bound mesh....goto;
skin > Edit Smooth Skin > Copy Skin Weights, this'll copy the weighting from you old mesh to you new mesh. Now just delete the stuff you imported into the scene and save as a new version.
Hope this helps
TomB

[mrpotato]

Guys thanks a lot for ur help its ben very helpful

As far as my little research have gone it seem to my experience that maya4 export weight maps dont work properly, at least with smooth skin weights in my scene , ive exported it to Maya3 with the script maya423.mel and try the same process,it worked almost perfect,some small errors in some vertex weights but very very minor problems... So my guess is that either the way maya 4 seem to export maps (all bones at the same time) is not very accurate(in 3 you have to export and import 1by 1) or im trying to use this tool in a wrong way in Maya4.HAs any of you guys experience problem with the export weight maps in maya4?
Thanks again!

[zaipha]

HI.. I'm having the same kinda problem as the guy who posted this question. I'm wondering if someone could point out my error. My clusters are under the smooth bind skin in deformation order, and I parented them to the face joint, yet when I translate the root, the clusters go crazy and the mesh is all weirded out.

Any anyone could give an idea of how to correct this, I'd really appreciate it.

.. In addition, just thought I'd mention, when I parent the cluster to the face joint, it automatically makes a group containing my cluster, that ends up getting parented to the face joint.

Thanks,

Z

[gawdzilla]

Check to see if the clusters are set to relative. They need to be relative clusters for this sort of thing to work.
alan
[****************************************
HI.. I'm having the same kinda problem as the guy who posted this question. I'm wondering if someone could point out my error. My clusters are under the smooth bind skin in deformation order, and I parented them to the face joint, yet when I translate the root, the clusters go crazy and the mesh is all weirded out.

Any anyone could give an idea of how to correct this, I'd really appreciate it.

.. In addition, just thought I'd mention, when I parent the cluster to the face joint, it automatically makes a group containing my cluster, that ends up getting parented to the face joint.

Thanks,

Z

[zaipha]

.yes that did it.

THX gawdzilla!