Weighting Disaster

[SwoopNebula 0]

Hey peeps, so i'm trying to get my character to the point where I can animate it from within c4d? 

 

I'm having a major dilema thats driving me crazy, after going throught the process of rigging this thing, when I get to the animate tab and try to move things around

the shirt and other things bend all out of whack......i'm fairly new to c4d. What have ai done wrong? is there an easier way I can go about animating this? 

 

i tried uploading to mixamo but i keep getting an error message.

Edited October 29 by Cerbera
Moved to Correct Section

[joolsd 7]

You not alone. I've been struggling for months and it never seems to get easier. But what I have learned is you can use the weight mapping brush to smooth, add, subtract the weight maps. And you can shift click on the weight map tag and smooth individual bones and control the parametric influence. There are a lot of thing switched on automatically which might stop the weight brush working. The tool is really sensitive so it is like 00.3 on the pressure or it will fly off out of control. It seems like a very difficult task to do. Would like more advice on this.

[digitvisions 211]

HI, the setting i usually use to paint the weights are: Projection on,Auto normalize on, the strength  and hardness to about 25% that will depended on if you add , deduct the weights or simply equalising the weights. Also for  a high polygon count mesh that need smoothing in between joints i use Smooth setting on low strength 10% .

[SwoopNebula 0]

I've tried weighting...it's worked for getting out parts of the hair and face that are being pulled along with the joints but not really for the way the mesh of the shirt clashes when folded upon itself. Below i've provided a file to the project, hopefully someone can help me figure it out.

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/13vuv6ifb9XaKUMKYjPKFqARd3zfO_4Rc/view?usp=sharing

 

 

[digitvisions 211]

Ok, I had a look at your file and  adjusted few joints for you to see  that it is possible to do but will take a lot of patience and time. I will post a link to  the file soon.

There are basics things you need to know when modelling a character, the scale is important specially when weights applied. you character is 700 mm high . also your mesh  with the exception of the shirt is triangulated. This will affect the way the mesh will deform.

all your joints weights need adjusting, they over spill on to adjacent joints.

https://wetransfer.com/downloads/dbbafe6160b8ded3180b768f7262cf7320191029153234/ae4bc7

[BigAl3D 99]

Well let me say that character rigging is one of the more difficult things to do in 3D, for most people. Taking a quick look at your scene, I see several issues. 

Number one is that mesh is not optimal for deforming since it's made from triangles. You want to stay with quads whenever possible. The mesh isn't lined up at the bottom with the base of the Character Object. The mesh isn't designed to bend properly in particular at the knee and elbow joints. Many of the joints are not in the best spot or are in the wrong place for good deformation. 

You mentioned you "tried weighting" but this entire process is all about weighting. The Character Object tries to do most of this work for you, but usually you'll need to adjust things. If your mesh is not good and your joints are not in the right spot, this will fail every time.

[SwoopNebula 0]

Yeah, I dived in and started messing with the weights, using the add/subtract and smooth tool. 

it's tedious but I was able to clean up the movement a great deal, thanks for the pointers on that.

 

the parts of the mesh that are triangulated seem (to me) to be moving a bit better than the shirt.

Is there a way to triangulate the shirt as well? if so do you think it would be worth it to do so?

 

[BigAl3D 99]

Select your character, make sure you're in Polygon mode. Go to the Select menu and look for Fill Selection. This selects just the shirt nicely. Then right-click and near the bottom, you'll see Triangulate.

[SwoopNebula 0]

1 hour ago, BigAl3D said:

Well let me say that character rigging is one of the more difficult things to do in 3D, for most people. Taking a quick look at your scene, I see several issues. 

Number one is that mesh is not optimal for deforming since it's made from triangles. You want to stay with quads whenever possible. The mesh isn't lined up at the bottom with the base of the Character Object. The mesh isn't designed to bend properly in particular at the knee and elbow joints. Many of the joints are not in the best spot or are in the wrong place for good deformation. 

You mentioned you "tried weighting" but this entire process is all about weighting. The Character Object tries to do most of this work for you, but usually you'll need to adjust things. If your mesh is not good and your joints are not in the right spot, this will fail every time.

thanks for the feedback man, much appreciated.

[Fastbee 213]

Weighting is also a pain in C4D.  In R19 they improved it a lot.  Still could be a lot better than it currently is.  The weighting tool is also designed strange so it's harder to see what is being weighted.  Enough complaining though.  To get a good weighting in C4D it's probably easiest to not use any of the autoweighting.  Instead zero everything out and manually weight every joint one by one being careful not to get one point with more than 100% weighting when added from all the joints.  I like to do harder weighting and use the smooth to get it nice and smooth.

 

Here is a video from one of the greats in character animation.

 

[Cerbera 2,710]

12 hours ago, Fastbee said:

Still could be a lot better than it currently is.

 

That was true until R21 I'd say. New auto-weighting is superb.

 

CBR