Re: Paint weights across multiple envelopes? And symmetry mapping errors....
I've requested the primitive bone fix for sym maps about 6 times now... Nulls are it as an alternative. Just wish there was the option to have more shapes for nulls as well as offsetting orientation in the shadows. On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 12:47 PM, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@hybride.comwrote: If you're using the implicit bones with success and don't need any of the benefits of the Softimage bone chains just use Nulls. It's typically what Im using. Eric T. On Monday, February 17, 2014 3:16:29 PM, Siew Yi Liang wrote: @Matt Morris: I didn't know that actually, that is fantastic! Going to try it ASAP~ @Matt Lind: I know, I should pick up more scripting knowledge... I only just started recently working with the XSI API (and python in general), so gimme a chance to catch up to you guys :D @Eric: That explains it. I was wondering why it was working with my main biped rig but not with the facial rig. (my biped rig is using nulls for deformers but I found out about implicit bones halfway and wanted to use them to see if I could then have a distinct type for them so that my controls could be selected using the null selection filter and my deformers using the bone filter instead.) So would you would recommend sticking with nulls/standard bones for defomers? Thanks a ton guys! Once I get a chance in the next few days I'll try GATORing the weights over to a merged mesh, edit them, and then bring them back to the main mesh. Yours sincerely, Siew Yi Liang On 2/17/2014 11:37 AM, Eric Thivierge wrote: In regards to the Symmetry Map not working, if you are using the implicit bones as you've said previously it won't work because they haven't fixed this script to compensate for using this object type which was only introduced with ICE Kinematics. It's been requested quite a few times but I haven't seen it fixed yet, then again I don't use the implicit bones much. Eric T. On Monday, February 17, 2014 2:27:26 PM, Matt Lind wrote: I solved the problem for our pipeline by writing a tool which is similar to GATOR but runs as a command instead of an operator. The advantage is the tool can operate on selected subcomponents instead of the entire mesh. A further embellishment I exposed was different methods for searching the source mesh for envelope weights. The user was free to move between built-in methods such as closest location, raycast, closest vertex, ... as well as other custom criteria I devised myself. I also wrote a dedicated clothing transfer tool which allows weights to be painted on our main character, then transferred and refit onto the other characters while accounting for changes in proportions of limbs and torso, for example. It's a very solvable problem if you crack open the script editor. Matt *From:*softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Siew Yi Liang *Sent:* Monday, February 17, 2014 10:29 AM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: Paint weights across multiple envelopes? And symmetry mapping errors The problem is...my mesh is already split up into pieces when i was starting to weight them. The full body mesh doesn't exist anymore, the hidden faces are already gone. :X Also I tried duplicating all the geometry and merging it together while trying to preserve the existing weighting so I could continue working on it and then GATOR the weights back to the seperated geo later, but merging the geo together even while transferring all attributes seemed to remove the weighting from the character entirely... I'm wondering if I should just bite the bullet and paint the weights manually at this point via numerical input. It's a pain, but right now I don't know of any other method that wouldn't be overly troublesome, short of modeling the hidden polys again and combining them back into the body mesh. The lack of ability to mirror weights on the head is going to be a real pain to get the rig to behave symmetrically though. Hopefully the paint tools get an update eventually for this sort of thing...I never even knew painting across multiple meshes was an issue, no wonder it's recommend to model unibody in XSI. Oh well, something new every day! :P Thanks for the advice all! Yours sincerely, Siew Yi Liang On 2/17/2014 3:14 AM, Greg Maguire wrote: This is my preferred method too. ILM had a really cool concept I'd like to see in Soft. Instead of painting with the radius of a circle, make the brush three dimensional like a ball. Wings can be tricky, I generally chop the top or bottom part of a wing off and Gator everything. However a 3D ball would remove that need. On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 11:08 AM, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com mailto:mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com wrote: You dont even have to merge them, gator will manage just fine for example: paint weigh on full body mesh
Re: Paint weights across multiple envelopes? And symmetry mapping errors....
* Just wish there was the option to have more shapes for nulls...* Didn't SI2014 come with a custom primitive SDK enhancement? On Tue, Feb 18, 2014 at 3:32 PM, Adam Sale adamfs...@gmail.com wrote: I've requested the primitive bone fix for sym maps about 6 times now... Nulls are it as an alternative. Just wish there was the option to have more shapes for nulls as well as offsetting orientation in the shadows. On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 12:47 PM, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@hybride.comwrote: If you're using the implicit bones with success and don't need any of the benefits of the Softimage bone chains just use Nulls. It's typically what Im using. Eric T. On Monday, February 17, 2014 3:16:29 PM, Siew Yi Liang wrote: @Matt Morris: I didn't know that actually, that is fantastic! Going to try it ASAP~ @Matt Lind: I know, I should pick up more scripting knowledge... I only just started recently working with the XSI API (and python in general), so gimme a chance to catch up to you guys :D @Eric: That explains it. I was wondering why it was working with my main biped rig but not with the facial rig. (my biped rig is using nulls for deformers but I found out about implicit bones halfway and wanted to use them to see if I could then have a distinct type for them so that my controls could be selected using the null selection filter and my deformers using the bone filter instead.) So would you would recommend sticking with nulls/standard bones for defomers? Thanks a ton guys! Once I get a chance in the next few days I'll try GATORing the weights over to a merged mesh, edit them, and then bring them back to the main mesh. Yours sincerely, Siew Yi Liang On 2/17/2014 11:37 AM, Eric Thivierge wrote: In regards to the Symmetry Map not working, if you are using the implicit bones as you've said previously it won't work because they haven't fixed this script to compensate for using this object type which was only introduced with ICE Kinematics. It's been requested quite a few times but I haven't seen it fixed yet, then again I don't use the implicit bones much. Eric T. On Monday, February 17, 2014 2:27:26 PM, Matt Lind wrote: I solved the problem for our pipeline by writing a tool which is similar to GATOR but runs as a command instead of an operator. The advantage is the tool can operate on selected subcomponents instead of the entire mesh. A further embellishment I exposed was different methods for searching the source mesh for envelope weights. The user was free to move between built-in methods such as closest location, raycast, closest vertex, ... as well as other custom criteria I devised myself. I also wrote a dedicated clothing transfer tool which allows weights to be painted on our main character, then transferred and refit onto the other characters while accounting for changes in proportions of limbs and torso, for example. It's a very solvable problem if you crack open the script editor. Matt *From:*softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Siew Yi Liang *Sent:* Monday, February 17, 2014 10:29 AM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: Paint weights across multiple envelopes? And symmetry mapping errors The problem is...my mesh is already split up into pieces when i was starting to weight them. The full body mesh doesn't exist anymore, the hidden faces are already gone. :X Also I tried duplicating all the geometry and merging it together while trying to preserve the existing weighting so I could continue working on it and then GATOR the weights back to the seperated geo later, but merging the geo together even while transferring all attributes seemed to remove the weighting from the character entirely... I'm wondering if I should just bite the bullet and paint the weights manually at this point via numerical input. It's a pain, but right now I don't know of any other method that wouldn't be overly troublesome, short of modeling the hidden polys again and combining them back into the body mesh. The lack of ability to mirror weights on the head is going to be a real pain to get the rig to behave symmetrically though. Hopefully the paint tools get an update eventually for this sort of thing...I never even knew painting across multiple meshes was an issue, no wonder it's recommend to model unibody in XSI. Oh well, something new every day! :P Thanks for the advice all! Yours sincerely, Siew Yi Liang On 2/17/2014 3:14 AM, Greg Maguire wrote: This is my preferred method too. ILM had a really cool concept I'd like to see in Soft. Instead of painting with the radius of a circle, make the brush three dimensional like a ball. Wings can be tricky, I generally chop the top or bottom part of a wing off and Gator everything. However a 3D ball would remove that need. On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 11:08 AM, Mirko Jankovic
Re: Paint weights across multiple envelopes? And symmetry mapping errors....
Yeah it did, so get on compiling us some custom objects plug-ins with pretty icons Alan!! On Tuesday, February 18, 2014 4:28:14 PM, Alan Fregtman wrote: / Just wish there was the option to have more shapes for nulls.../ Didn't SI2014 come with a custom primitive SDK enhancement? On Tue, Feb 18, 2014 at 3:32 PM, Adam Sale adamfs...@gmail.com mailto:adamfs...@gmail.com wrote: I've requested the primitive bone fix for sym maps about 6 times now... Nulls are it as an alternative. Just wish there was the option to have more shapes for nulls as well as offsetting orientation in the shadows. On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 12:47 PM, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@hybride.com mailto:ethivie...@hybride.com wrote: If you're using the implicit bones with success and don't need any of the benefits of the Softimage bone chains just use Nulls. It's typically what Im using. Eric T. On Monday, February 17, 2014 3:16:29 PM, Siew Yi Liang wrote: @Matt Morris: I didn't know that actually, that is fantastic! Going to try it ASAP~ @Matt Lind: I know, I should pick up more scripting knowledge... I only just started recently working with the XSI API (and python in general), so gimme a chance to catch up to you guys :D @Eric: That explains it. I was wondering why it was working with my main biped rig but not with the facial rig. (my biped rig is using nulls for deformers but I found out about implicit bones halfway and wanted to use them to see if I could then have a distinct type for them so that my controls could be selected using the null selection filter and my deformers using the bone filter instead.) So would you would recommend sticking with nulls/standard bones for defomers? Thanks a ton guys! Once I get a chance in the next few days I'll try GATORing the weights over to a merged mesh, edit them, and then bring them back to the main mesh. Yours sincerely, Siew Yi Liang On 2/17/2014 11:37 AM, Eric Thivierge wrote: In regards to the Symmetry Map not working, if you are using the implicit bones as you've said previously it won't work because they haven't fixed this script to compensate for using this object type which was only introduced with ICE Kinematics. It's been requested quite a few times but I haven't seen it fixed yet, then again I don't use the implicit bones much. Eric T. On Monday, February 17, 2014 2:27:26 PM, Matt Lind wrote: I solved the problem for our pipeline by writing a tool which is similar to GATOR but runs as a command instead of an operator. The advantage is the tool can operate on selected subcomponents instead of the entire mesh. A further embellishment I exposed was different methods for searching the source mesh for envelope weights. The user was free to move between built-in methods such as closest location, raycast, closest vertex, … as well as other custom criteria I devised myself. I also wrote a dedicated clothing transfer tool which allows weights to be painted on our main character, then transferred and refit onto the other characters while accounting for changes in proportions of limbs and torso, for example. It’s a very solvable problem if you crack open the script editor. Matt *From:*softimage-bounces@__listproc.autodesk.com mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-bounces@__listproc.autodesk.com mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Siew Yi Liang *Sent:* Monday, February 17, 2014 10:29 AM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.__com mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: Paint weights across multiple envelopes? And symmetry mapping errors
Re: Paint weights across multiple envelopes? And symmetry mapping errors....
Of *Siew Yi Liang *Sent:* Monday, February 17, 2014 10:29 AM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.__com mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: Paint weights across multiple envelopes? And symmetry mapping errors The problem is...my mesh is already split up into pieces when i was starting to weight them. The full body mesh doesn't exist anymore, the hidden faces are already gone. :X Also I tried duplicating all the geometry and merging it together while trying to preserve the existing weighting so I could continue working on it and then GATOR the weights back to the seperated geo later, but merging the geo together even while transferring all attributes seemed to remove the weighting from the character entirely... I'm wondering if I should just bite the bullet and paint the weights manually at this point via numerical input. It's a pain, but right now I don't know of any other method that wouldn't be overly troublesome, short of modeling the hidden polys again and combining them back into the body mesh. The lack of ability to mirror weights on the head is going to be a real pain to get the rig to behave symmetrically though. Hopefully the paint tools get an update eventually for this sort of thing...I never even knew painting across multiple meshes was an issue, no wonder it's recommend to model unibody in XSI. Oh well, something new every day! :P Thanks for the advice all! Yours sincerely, Siew Yi Liang On 2/17/2014 3:14 AM, Greg Maguire wrote: This is my preferred method too. ILM had a really cool concept I'd like to see in Soft. Instead of painting with the radius of a circle, make the brush three dimensional like a ball. Wings can be tricky, I generally chop the top or bottom part of a wing off and Gator everything. However a 3D ball would remove that need. On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 11:08 AM, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com mailto:mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com mailto:mirkoj.animator@gmail.__com mailto:mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com wrote: You dont even have to merge them, gator will manage just fine for example: paint weigh on full body mesh duplicate body mesh and delete all non seen polys, you dont need them, but you can jstu skip this and just keep full body mesh if you dont mind having not seen polygons, maybe even better if cloth materials have sometranslucency then GATOR shirt, pants.. any other cloth or prop object. It iwill follow full body mehsh just fine Tweak here or there if needed but in mosta case it works pretty fine On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 11:43 AM, Peter Agg peter@googlemail.com mailto:peter@googlemail.com mailto:peter.agg@googlemail.__com mailto:peter@googlemail.com wrote: Yep, I do as Mirko does for this stuff, the envelope tools are fairly limited for a lot of this fiddly kind of things. If you're merging existing geo together make sure everything is welded - Polygon Islands are a pain to deal with as well. Ideally you want some kind
Re: Paint weights across multiple envelopes? And symmetry mapping errors....
Not sure how others deal with it but when having character that will have cltoth weighted and simulated I like to have an mesh with full body, and then 2nd mesh with only visible parts, hands, neck, head etc... Then painting weights on full body mesh only, GATOR-ing everything else and then for animationa nd everything els using only cloth and partialy bodu mesh, and full body mesh is left out of model not used for anything esle but for painting and GATOR-ing weights to all other meshes on characters. On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 11:30 AM, Siew Yi Liang soni...@gmail.com wrote: Hi all, sorry for another silly question, but I've just spent the better part of 3 hours trying to find a solution: is there actually a way in XSI to paint across multiple envelopes at the same time, assuming they have the same deformer influences? I've been searching around for a way to do so but it doesn't seem like I can, and the best I can hope for is to GATOR over the points I want? The problem is that I have a character split up into several parts, so weighting the areas where neck meets shirt, torso meets pants etc. is a little annoying when I can't paint across them seamlessly. I've actually never had to deal with this before in XSI, so I have no idea if this is actually possible? Additionally, when trying to create a symmetry mapping template for a certain geometry, I'm getting: Application.CreateSymmetryMappingTemplate(, , , ) # ERROR : 2057-GetSkeleton - Input object is not a skeleton object - [line 492 in C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Softimage 2013 SP1\Application\DSScripts\enveloping.vbs] The deformers affecting it are just implicit bones, so I'm not sure what exactly the error is referring to - I tried manually creating the symmetry template myself and mirroring the weights, but nothing happened. No error message appeared, but the weights didn't mirror either. The scene file is available at: http://1drv.ms/1cfWE34 , I'd really appreciate it if anyone has run into this situation before and could spare a few minutes to take a quick look! The head geometry is the one giving problems (I thought it might have had something to do with the ICE facial rig, but I froze those operators and tried doing the symmetry template again and it still gave the same issue...) -- Yours sincerely, Siew Yi Liang
Re: Paint weights across multiple envelopes? And symmetry mapping errors....
OHHH. So just duplicate my mesh objects, merge them all together, use that to paint weights, and then GATOR over to individual pieces is what you're saying? Going to try that now! Hopefully I can workaround the symmetry problem that way as well... (Speaking of which, does XSI have a way to prune deformers whose weight influence on the mesh is zero?) Yours sincerely, Siew Yi Liang On 2/17/2014 2:34 AM, Mirko Jankovic wrote: Not sure how others deal with it but when having character that will have cltoth weighted and simulated I like to have an mesh with full body, and then 2nd mesh with only visible parts, hands, neck, head etc... Then painting weights on full body mesh only, GATOR-ing everything else and then for animationa nd everything els using only cloth and partialy bodu mesh, and full body mesh is left out of model not used for anything esle but for painting and GATOR-ing weights to all other meshes on characters. On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 11:30 AM, Siew Yi Liang soni...@gmail.com mailto:soni...@gmail.com wrote: Hi all, sorry for another silly question, but I've just spent the better part of 3 hours trying to find a solution: is there actually a way in XSI to paint across multiple envelopes at the same time, assuming they have the same deformer influences? I've been searching around for a way to do so but it doesn't seem like I can, and the best I can hope for is to GATOR over the points I want? The problem is that I have a character split up into several parts, so weighting the areas where neck meets shirt, torso meets pants etc. is a little annoying when I can't paint across them seamlessly. I've actually never had to deal with this before in XSI, so I have no idea if this is actually possible? Additionally, when trying to create a symmetry mapping template for a certain geometry, I'm getting: Application.CreateSymmetryMappingTemplate(, , , ) # ERROR : 2057-GetSkeleton - Input object is not a skeleton object - [line 492 in C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Softimage 2013 SP1\Application\DSScripts\enveloping.vbs] The deformers affecting it are just implicit bones, so I'm not sure what exactly the error is referring to - I tried manually creating the symmetry template myself and mirroring the weights, but nothing happened. No error message appeared, but the weights didn't mirror either. The scene file is available at: http://1drv.ms/1cfWE34 , I'd really appreciate it if anyone has run into this situation before and could spare a few minutes to take a quick look! The head geometry is the one giving problems (I thought it might have had something to do with the ICE facial rig, but I froze those operators and tried doing the symmetry template again and it still gave the same issue...) -- Yours sincerely, Siew Yi Liang
Re: Paint weights across multiple envelopes? And symmetry mapping errors....
Yep, I do as Mirko does for this stuff, the envelope tools are fairly limited for a lot of this fiddly kind of things. If you're merging existing geo together make sure everything is welded - Polygon Islands are a pain to deal with as well. Ideally you want some kind of single mesh body-glove for the 'master' envelope. On 17 February 2014 10:34, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com wrote: Not sure how others deal with it but when having character that will have cltoth weighted and simulated I like to have an mesh with full body, and then 2nd mesh with only visible parts, hands, neck, head etc... Then painting weights on full body mesh only, GATOR-ing everything else and then for animationa nd everything els using only cloth and partialy bodu mesh, and full body mesh is left out of model not used for anything esle but for painting and GATOR-ing weights to all other meshes on characters. On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 11:30 AM, Siew Yi Liang soni...@gmail.com wrote: Hi all, sorry for another silly question, but I've just spent the better part of 3 hours trying to find a solution: is there actually a way in XSI to paint across multiple envelopes at the same time, assuming they have the same deformer influences? I've been searching around for a way to do so but it doesn't seem like I can, and the best I can hope for is to GATOR over the points I want? The problem is that I have a character split up into several parts, so weighting the areas where neck meets shirt, torso meets pants etc. is a little annoying when I can't paint across them seamlessly. I've actually never had to deal with this before in XSI, so I have no idea if this is actually possible? Additionally, when trying to create a symmetry mapping template for a certain geometry, I'm getting: Application.CreateSymmetryMappingTemplate(, , , ) # ERROR : 2057-GetSkeleton - Input object is not a skeleton object - [line 492 in C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Softimage 2013 SP1\Application\DSScripts\enveloping.vbs] The deformers affecting it are just implicit bones, so I'm not sure what exactly the error is referring to - I tried manually creating the symmetry template myself and mirroring the weights, but nothing happened. No error message appeared, but the weights didn't mirror either. The scene file is available at: http://1drv.ms/1cfWE34 , I'd really appreciate it if anyone has run into this situation before and could spare a few minutes to take a quick look! The head geometry is the one giving problems (I thought it might have had something to do with the ICE facial rig, but I froze those operators and tried doing the symmetry template again and it still gave the same issue...) -- Yours sincerely, Siew Yi Liang
Re: Paint weights across multiple envelopes? And symmetry mapping errors....
You dont even have to merge them, gator will manage just fine for example: paint weigh on full body mesh duplicate body mesh and delete all non seen polys, you dont need them, but you can jstu skip this and just keep full body mesh if you dont mind having not seen polygons, maybe even better if cloth materials have sometranslucency then GATOR shirt, pants.. any other cloth or prop object. It iwill follow full body mehsh just fine Tweak here or there if needed but in mosta case it works pretty fine On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 11:43 AM, Peter Agg peter@googlemail.comwrote: Yep, I do as Mirko does for this stuff, the envelope tools are fairly limited for a lot of this fiddly kind of things. If you're merging existing geo together make sure everything is welded - Polygon Islands are a pain to deal with as well. Ideally you want some kind of single mesh body-glove for the 'master' envelope. On 17 February 2014 10:34, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.comwrote: Not sure how others deal with it but when having character that will have cltoth weighted and simulated I like to have an mesh with full body, and then 2nd mesh with only visible parts, hands, neck, head etc... Then painting weights on full body mesh only, GATOR-ing everything else and then for animationa nd everything els using only cloth and partialy bodu mesh, and full body mesh is left out of model not used for anything esle but for painting and GATOR-ing weights to all other meshes on characters. On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 11:30 AM, Siew Yi Liang soni...@gmail.comwrote: Hi all, sorry for another silly question, but I've just spent the better part of 3 hours trying to find a solution: is there actually a way in XSI to paint across multiple envelopes at the same time, assuming they have the same deformer influences? I've been searching around for a way to do so but it doesn't seem like I can, and the best I can hope for is to GATOR over the points I want? The problem is that I have a character split up into several parts, so weighting the areas where neck meets shirt, torso meets pants etc. is a little annoying when I can't paint across them seamlessly. I've actually never had to deal with this before in XSI, so I have no idea if this is actually possible? Additionally, when trying to create a symmetry mapping template for a certain geometry, I'm getting: Application.CreateSymmetryMappingTemplate(, , , ) # ERROR : 2057-GetSkeleton - Input object is not a skeleton object - [line 492 in C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Softimage 2013 SP1\Application\DSScripts\enveloping.vbs] The deformers affecting it are just implicit bones, so I'm not sure what exactly the error is referring to - I tried manually creating the symmetry template myself and mirroring the weights, but nothing happened. No error message appeared, but the weights didn't mirror either. The scene file is available at: http://1drv.ms/1cfWE34 , I'd really appreciate it if anyone has run into this situation before and could spare a few minutes to take a quick look! The head geometry is the one giving problems (I thought it might have had something to do with the ICE facial rig, but I froze those operators and tried doing the symmetry template again and it still gave the same issue...) -- Yours sincerely, Siew Yi Liang
Re: Paint weights across multiple envelopes? And symmetry mapping errors....
What I do is duplicate the object, and delete the polygons I don't need. This way the envelope is copied and I don't need to use Gator. I automatized this task with a couple of scripts: https://vimeo.com/44115056 You could use gator to keep the transfer attributes alive and keep tweaking the full body object. I don't think you can prune unused deformers out of the box. I use Oz_Clean_WeightsPlugin for that. Martin On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 7:43 PM, Peter Agg peter@googlemail.com wrote: Yep, I do as Mirko does for this stuff, the envelope tools are fairly limited for a lot of this fiddly kind of things. If you're merging existing geo together make sure everything is welded - Polygon Islands are a pain to deal with as well. Ideally you want some kind of single mesh body-glove for the 'master' envelope. On 17 February 2014 10:34, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.comwrote: Not sure how others deal with it but when having character that will have cltoth weighted and simulated I like to have an mesh with full body, and then 2nd mesh with only visible parts, hands, neck, head etc... Then painting weights on full body mesh only, GATOR-ing everything else and then for animationa nd everything els using only cloth and partialy bodu mesh, and full body mesh is left out of model not used for anything esle but for painting and GATOR-ing weights to all other meshes on characters. On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 11:30 AM, Siew Yi Liang soni...@gmail.comwrote: Hi all, sorry for another silly question, but I've just spent the better part of 3 hours trying to find a solution: is there actually a way in XSI to paint across multiple envelopes at the same time, assuming they have the same deformer influences? I've been searching around for a way to do so but it doesn't seem like I can, and the best I can hope for is to GATOR over the points I want? The problem is that I have a character split up into several parts, so weighting the areas where neck meets shirt, torso meets pants etc. is a little annoying when I can't paint across them seamlessly. I've actually never had to deal with this before in XSI, so I have no idea if this is actually possible? Additionally, when trying to create a symmetry mapping template for a certain geometry, I'm getting: Application.CreateSymmetryMappingTemplate(, , , ) # ERROR : 2057-GetSkeleton - Input object is not a skeleton object - [line 492 in C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Softimage 2013 SP1\Application\DSScripts\enveloping.vbs] The deformers affecting it are just implicit bones, so I'm not sure what exactly the error is referring to - I tried manually creating the symmetry template myself and mirroring the weights, but nothing happened. No error message appeared, but the weights didn't mirror either. The scene file is available at: http://1drv.ms/1cfWE34 , I'd really appreciate it if anyone has run into this situation before and could spare a few minutes to take a quick look! The head geometry is the one giving problems (I thought it might have had something to do with the ICE facial rig, but I froze those operators and tried doing the symmetry template again and it still gave the same issue...) -- Yours sincerely, Siew Yi Liang
Re: Paint weights across multiple envelopes? And symmetry mapping errors....
This is my preferred method too. ILM had a really cool concept I'd like to see in Soft. Instead of painting with the radius of a circle, make the brush three dimensional like a ball. Wings can be tricky, I generally chop the top or bottom part of a wing off and Gator everything. However a 3D ball would remove that need. On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 11:08 AM, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.comwrote: You dont even have to merge them, gator will manage just fine for example: paint weigh on full body mesh duplicate body mesh and delete all non seen polys, you dont need them, but you can jstu skip this and just keep full body mesh if you dont mind having not seen polygons, maybe even better if cloth materials have sometranslucency then GATOR shirt, pants.. any other cloth or prop object. It iwill follow full body mehsh just fine Tweak here or there if needed but in mosta case it works pretty fine On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 11:43 AM, Peter Agg peter@googlemail.comwrote: Yep, I do as Mirko does for this stuff, the envelope tools are fairly limited for a lot of this fiddly kind of things. If you're merging existing geo together make sure everything is welded - Polygon Islands are a pain to deal with as well. Ideally you want some kind of single mesh body-glove for the 'master' envelope. On 17 February 2014 10:34, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.comwrote: Not sure how others deal with it but when having character that will have cltoth weighted and simulated I like to have an mesh with full body, and then 2nd mesh with only visible parts, hands, neck, head etc... Then painting weights on full body mesh only, GATOR-ing everything else and then for animationa nd everything els using only cloth and partialy bodu mesh, and full body mesh is left out of model not used for anything esle but for painting and GATOR-ing weights to all other meshes on characters. On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 11:30 AM, Siew Yi Liang soni...@gmail.comwrote: Hi all, sorry for another silly question, but I've just spent the better part of 3 hours trying to find a solution: is there actually a way in XSI to paint across multiple envelopes at the same time, assuming they have the same deformer influences? I've been searching around for a way to do so but it doesn't seem like I can, and the best I can hope for is to GATOR over the points I want? The problem is that I have a character split up into several parts, so weighting the areas where neck meets shirt, torso meets pants etc. is a little annoying when I can't paint across them seamlessly. I've actually never had to deal with this before in XSI, so I have no idea if this is actually possible? Additionally, when trying to create a symmetry mapping template for a certain geometry, I'm getting: Application.CreateSymmetryMappingTemplate(, , , ) # ERROR : 2057-GetSkeleton - Input object is not a skeleton object - [line 492 in C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Softimage 2013 SP1\Application\DSScripts\enveloping.vbs] The deformers affecting it are just implicit bones, so I'm not sure what exactly the error is referring to - I tried manually creating the symmetry template myself and mirroring the weights, but nothing happened. No error message appeared, but the weights didn't mirror either. The scene file is available at: http://1drv.ms/1cfWE34 , I'd really appreciate it if anyone has run into this situation before and could spare a few minutes to take a quick look! The head geometry is the one giving problems (I thought it might have had something to do with the ICE facial rig, but I froze those operators and tried doing the symmetry template again and it still gave the same issue...) -- Yours sincerely, Siew Yi Liang -- *Greg Maguire* | Inlifesize Mobile: +44 7512 361462 | Phone: +44 2890 204739 g...@inlifesize.com | www.inlifesize.com
Re: Paint weights across multiple envelopes? And symmetry mapping errors....
The problem is...my mesh is already split up into pieces when i was starting to weight them. The full body mesh doesn't exist anymore, the hidden faces are already gone. :X Also I tried duplicating all the geometry and merging it together while trying to preserve the existing weighting so I could continue working on it and then GATOR the weights back to the seperated geo later, but merging the geo together even while transferring all attributes seemed to remove the weighting from the character entirely... I'm wondering if I should just bite the bullet and paint the weights manually at this point via numerical input. It's a pain, but right now I don't know of any other method that wouldn't be overly troublesome, short of modeling the hidden polys again and combining them back into the body mesh. The lack of ability to mirror weights on the head is going to be a real pain to get the rig to behave symmetrically though. Hopefully the paint tools get an update eventually for this sort of thing...I never even knew painting across multiple meshes was an issue, no wonder it's recommend to model unibody in XSI. Oh well, something new every day! :P Thanks for the advice all! Yours sincerely, Siew Yi Liang On 2/17/2014 3:14 AM, Greg Maguire wrote: This is my preferred method too. ILM had a really cool concept I'd like to see in Soft. Instead of painting with the radius of a circle, make the brush three dimensional like a ball. Wings can be tricky, I generally chop the top or bottom part of a wing off and Gator everything. However a 3D ball would remove that need. On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 11:08 AM, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com mailto:mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com wrote: You dont even have to merge them, gator will manage just fine for example: paint weigh on full body mesh duplicate body mesh and delete all non seen polys, you dont need them, but you can jstu skip this and just keep full body mesh if you dont mind having not seen polygons, maybe even better if cloth materials have sometranslucency then GATOR shirt, pants.. any other cloth or prop object. It iwill follow full body mehsh just fine Tweak here or there if needed but in mosta case it works pretty fine On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 11:43 AM, Peter Agg peter@googlemail.com mailto:peter@googlemail.com wrote: Yep, I do as Mirko does for this stuff, the envelope tools are fairly limited for a lot of this fiddly kind of things. If you're merging existing geo together make sure everything is welded - Polygon Islands are a pain to deal with as well. Ideally you want some kind of single mesh body-glove for the 'master' envelope. On 17 February 2014 10:34, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com mailto:mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com wrote: Not sure how others deal with it but when having character that will have cltoth weighted and simulated I like to have an mesh with full body, and then 2nd mesh with only visible parts, hands, neck, head etc... Then painting weights on full body mesh only, GATOR-ing everything else and then for animationa nd everything els using only cloth and partialy bodu mesh, and full body mesh is left out of model not used for anything esle but for painting and GATOR-ing weights to all other meshes on characters. On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 11:30 AM, Siew Yi Liang soni...@gmail.com mailto:soni...@gmail.com wrote: Hi all, sorry for another silly question, but I've just spent the better part of 3 hours trying to find a solution: is there actually a way in XSI to paint across multiple envelopes at the same time, assuming they have the same deformer influences? I've been searching around for a way to do so but it doesn't seem like I can, and the best I can hope for is to GATOR over the points I want? The problem is that I have a character split up into several parts, so weighting the areas where neck meets shirt, torso meets pants etc. is a little annoying when I can't paint across them seamlessly. I've actually never had to deal with this before in XSI, so I have no idea if this is actually possible? Additionally, when trying to create a symmetry mapping template for a certain geometry, I'm getting: Application.CreateSymmetryMappingTemplate(, , , ) # ERROR : 2057-GetSkeleton - Input object is not a skeleton object - [line 492 in C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Softimage 2013
Re: Paint weights across multiple envelopes? And symmetry mapping errors....
You know you can gator from multiple sources right? So if you already have your merged mesh, with the geo frozen (worth deleting any rogue clusters as well) you can then select gator and pick all the enveloped meshes that make up your character. Transfer the envelope weighting, then 'freeze modelling' the mesh so that it freezes off the gator operator but keeps the envelope. Make your weight edits, and then gator them back to the original meshes. (delete the envelope from the original parts before gatoring). On 17 February 2014 18:28, Siew Yi Liang soni...@gmail.com wrote: The problem is...my mesh is already split up into pieces when i was starting to weight them. The full body mesh doesn't exist anymore, the hidden faces are already gone. :X Also I tried duplicating all the geometry and merging it together while trying to preserve the existing weighting so I could continue working on it and then GATOR the weights back to the seperated geo later, but merging the geo together even while transferring all attributes seemed to remove the weighting from the character entirely... I'm wondering if I should just bite the bullet and paint the weights manually at this point via numerical input. It's a pain, but right now I don't know of any other method that wouldn't be overly troublesome, short of modeling the hidden polys again and combining them back into the body mesh. The lack of ability to mirror weights on the head is going to be a real pain to get the rig to behave symmetrically though. Hopefully the paint tools get an update eventually for this sort of thing...I never even knew painting across multiple meshes was an issue, no wonder it's recommend to model unibody in XSI. Oh well, something new every day! :P Thanks for the advice all! Yours sincerely, Siew Yi Liang On 2/17/2014 3:14 AM, Greg Maguire wrote: This is my preferred method too. ILM had a really cool concept I'd like to see in Soft. Instead of painting with the radius of a circle, make the brush three dimensional like a ball. Wings can be tricky, I generally chop the top or bottom part of a wing off and Gator everything. However a 3D ball would remove that need. On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 11:08 AM, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com wrote: You dont even have to merge them, gator will manage just fine for example: paint weigh on full body mesh duplicate body mesh and delete all non seen polys, you dont need them, but you can jstu skip this and just keep full body mesh if you dont mind having not seen polygons, maybe even better if cloth materials have sometranslucency then GATOR shirt, pants.. any other cloth or prop object. It iwill follow full body mehsh just fine Tweak here or there if needed but in mosta case it works pretty fine On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 11:43 AM, Peter Agg peter@googlemail.comwrote: Yep, I do as Mirko does for this stuff, the envelope tools are fairly limited for a lot of this fiddly kind of things. If you're merging existing geo together make sure everything is welded - Polygon Islands are a pain to deal with as well. Ideally you want some kind of single mesh body-glove for the 'master' envelope. On 17 February 2014 10:34, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.comwrote: Not sure how others deal with it but when having character that will have cltoth weighted and simulated I like to have an mesh with full body, and then 2nd mesh with only visible parts, hands, neck, head etc... Then painting weights on full body mesh only, GATOR-ing everything else and then for animationa nd everything els using only cloth and partialy bodu mesh, and full body mesh is left out of model not used for anything esle but for painting and GATOR-ing weights to all other meshes on characters. On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 11:30 AM, Siew Yi Liang soni...@gmail.comwrote: Hi all, sorry for another silly question, but I've just spent the better part of 3 hours trying to find a solution: is there actually a way in XSI to paint across multiple envelopes at the same time, assuming they have the same deformer influences? I've been searching around for a way to do so but it doesn't seem like I can, and the best I can hope for is to GATOR over the points I want? The problem is that I have a character split up into several parts, so weighting the areas where neck meets shirt, torso meets pants etc. is a little annoying when I can't paint across them seamlessly. I've actually never had to deal with this before in XSI, so I have no idea if this is actually possible? Additionally, when trying to create a symmetry mapping template for a certain geometry, I'm getting: Application.CreateSymmetryMappingTemplate(, , , ) # ERROR : 2057-GetSkeleton - Input object is not a skeleton object - [line 492 in C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Softimage 2013 SP1\Application\DSScripts\enveloping.vbs] The deformers affecting it are just implicit bones, so I'm not sure what
RE: Paint weights across multiple envelopes? And symmetry mapping errors....
I solved the problem for our pipeline by writing a tool which is similar to GATOR but runs as a command instead of an operator. The advantage is the tool can operate on selected subcomponents instead of the entire mesh. A further embellishment I exposed was different methods for searching the source mesh for envelope weights. The user was free to move between built-in methods such as closest location, raycast, closest vertex, ... as well as other custom criteria I devised myself. I also wrote a dedicated clothing transfer tool which allows weights to be painted on our main character, then transferred and refit onto the other characters while accounting for changes in proportions of limbs and torso, for example. It's a very solvable problem if you crack open the script editor. Matt From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Siew Yi Liang Sent: Monday, February 17, 2014 10:29 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Paint weights across multiple envelopes? And symmetry mapping errors The problem is...my mesh is already split up into pieces when i was starting to weight them. The full body mesh doesn't exist anymore, the hidden faces are already gone. :X Also I tried duplicating all the geometry and merging it together while trying to preserve the existing weighting so I could continue working on it and then GATOR the weights back to the seperated geo later, but merging the geo together even while transferring all attributes seemed to remove the weighting from the character entirely... I'm wondering if I should just bite the bullet and paint the weights manually at this point via numerical input. It's a pain, but right now I don't know of any other method that wouldn't be overly troublesome, short of modeling the hidden polys again and combining them back into the body mesh. The lack of ability to mirror weights on the head is going to be a real pain to get the rig to behave symmetrically though. Hopefully the paint tools get an update eventually for this sort of thing...I never even knew painting across multiple meshes was an issue, no wonder it's recommend to model unibody in XSI. Oh well, something new every day! :P Thanks for the advice all! Yours sincerely, Siew Yi Liang On 2/17/2014 3:14 AM, Greg Maguire wrote: This is my preferred method too. ILM had a really cool concept I'd like to see in Soft. Instead of painting with the radius of a circle, make the brush three dimensional like a ball. Wings can be tricky, I generally chop the top or bottom part of a wing off and Gator everything. However a 3D ball would remove that need. On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 11:08 AM, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.commailto:mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com wrote: You dont even have to merge them, gator will manage just fine for example: paint weigh on full body mesh duplicate body mesh and delete all non seen polys, you dont need them, but you can jstu skip this and just keep full body mesh if you dont mind having not seen polygons, maybe even better if cloth materials have sometranslucency then GATOR shirt, pants.. any other cloth or prop object. It iwill follow full body mehsh just fine Tweak here or there if needed but in mosta case it works pretty fine On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 11:43 AM, Peter Agg peter@googlemail.commailto:peter@googlemail.com wrote: Yep, I do as Mirko does for this stuff, the envelope tools are fairly limited for a lot of this fiddly kind of things. If you're merging existing geo together make sure everything is welded - Polygon Islands are a pain to deal with as well. Ideally you want some kind of single mesh body-glove for the 'master' envelope. On 17 February 2014 10:34, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.commailto:mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com wrote: Not sure how others deal with it but when having character that will have cltoth weighted and simulated I like to have an mesh with full body, and then 2nd mesh with only visible parts, hands, neck, head etc... Then painting weights on full body mesh only, GATOR-ing everything else and then for animationa nd everything els using only cloth and partialy bodu mesh, and full body mesh is left out of model not used for anything esle but for painting and GATOR-ing weights to all other meshes on characters. On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 11:30 AM, Siew Yi Liang soni...@gmail.commailto:soni...@gmail.com wrote: Hi all, sorry for another silly question, but I've just spent the better part of 3 hours trying to find a solution: is there actually a way in XSI to paint across multiple envelopes at the same time, assuming they have the same deformer influences? I've been searching around for a way to do so but it doesn't seem like I can, and the best I can hope for is to GATOR over the points I want? The problem is that I have a character split up into several parts, so weighting the areas where neck meets shirt
Re: Paint weights across multiple envelopes? And symmetry mapping errors....
In regards to the Symmetry Map not working, if you are using the implicit bones as you've said previously it won't work because they haven't fixed this script to compensate for using this object type which was only introduced with ICE Kinematics. It's been requested quite a few times but I haven't seen it fixed yet, then again I don't use the implicit bones much. Eric T. On Monday, February 17, 2014 2:27:26 PM, Matt Lind wrote: I solved the problem for our pipeline by writing a tool which is similar to GATOR but runs as a command instead of an operator. The advantage is the tool can operate on selected subcomponents instead of the entire mesh. A further embellishment I exposed was different methods for searching the source mesh for envelope weights. The user was free to move between built-in methods such as closest location, raycast, closest vertex, … as well as other custom criteria I devised myself. I also wrote a dedicated clothing transfer tool which allows weights to be painted on our main character, then transferred and refit onto the other characters while accounting for changes in proportions of limbs and torso, for example. It’s a very solvable problem if you crack open the script editor. Matt *From:*softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Siew Yi Liang *Sent:* Monday, February 17, 2014 10:29 AM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: Paint weights across multiple envelopes? And symmetry mapping errors The problem is...my mesh is already split up into pieces when i was starting to weight them. The full body mesh doesn't exist anymore, the hidden faces are already gone. :X Also I tried duplicating all the geometry and merging it together while trying to preserve the existing weighting so I could continue working on it and then GATOR the weights back to the seperated geo later, but merging the geo together even while transferring all attributes seemed to remove the weighting from the character entirely... I'm wondering if I should just bite the bullet and paint the weights manually at this point via numerical input. It's a pain, but right now I don't know of any other method that wouldn't be overly troublesome, short of modeling the hidden polys again and combining them back into the body mesh. The lack of ability to mirror weights on the head is going to be a real pain to get the rig to behave symmetrically though. Hopefully the paint tools get an update eventually for this sort of thing...I never even knew painting across multiple meshes was an issue, no wonder it's recommend to model unibody in XSI. Oh well, something new every day! :P Thanks for the advice all! Yours sincerely, Siew Yi Liang On 2/17/2014 3:14 AM, Greg Maguire wrote: This is my preferred method too. ILM had a really cool concept I'd like to see in Soft. Instead of painting with the radius of a circle, make the brush three dimensional like a ball. Wings can be tricky, I generally chop the top or bottom part of a wing off and Gator everything. However a 3D ball would remove that need. On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 11:08 AM, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com mailto:mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com wrote: You dont even have to merge them, gator will manage just fine for example: paint weigh on full body mesh duplicate body mesh and delete all non seen polys, you dont need them, but you can jstu skip this and just keep full body mesh if you dont mind having not seen polygons, maybe even better if cloth materials have sometranslucency then GATOR shirt, pants.. any other cloth or prop object. It iwill follow full body mehsh just fine Tweak here or there if needed but in mosta case it works pretty fine On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 11:43 AM, Peter Agg peter@googlemail.com mailto:peter@googlemail.com wrote: Yep, I do as Mirko does for this stuff, the envelope tools are fairly limited for a lot of this fiddly kind of things. If you're merging existing geo together make sure everything is welded - Polygon Islands are a pain to deal with as well. Ideally you want some kind of single mesh body-glove for the 'master' envelope. On 17 February 2014 10:34, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com mailto:mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com wrote: Not sure how others deal with it but when having character that will have cltoth weighted and simulated I like to have an mesh with full body, and then 2nd mesh with only visible parts, hands, neck, head etc... Then painting weights on full body mesh only, GATOR-ing everything else and then for animationa nd everything els using only cloth and partialy bodu mesh, and full body mesh is left out of model not used for anything esle but for painting and GATOR-ing weights to all other meshes on characters. On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 11:30 AM, Siew Yi Liang soni
Re: Paint weights across multiple envelopes? And symmetry mapping errors....
@Matt Morris: I didn't know that actually, that is fantastic! Going to try it ASAP~ @Matt Lind: I know, I should pick up more scripting knowledge... I only just started recently working with the XSI API (and python in general), so gimme a chance to catch up to you guys :D @Eric: That explains it. I was wondering why it was working with my main biped rig but not with the facial rig. (my biped rig is using nulls for deformers but I found out about implicit bones halfway and wanted to use them to see if I could then have a distinct type for them so that my controls could be selected using the null selection filter and my deformers using the bone filter instead.) So would you would recommend sticking with nulls/standard bones for defomers? Thanks a ton guys! Once I get a chance in the next few days I'll try GATORing the weights over to a merged mesh, edit them, and then bring them back to the main mesh. Yours sincerely, Siew Yi Liang On 2/17/2014 11:37 AM, Eric Thivierge wrote: In regards to the Symmetry Map not working, if you are using the implicit bones as you've said previously it won't work because they haven't fixed this script to compensate for using this object type which was only introduced with ICE Kinematics. It's been requested quite a few times but I haven't seen it fixed yet, then again I don't use the implicit bones much. Eric T. On Monday, February 17, 2014 2:27:26 PM, Matt Lind wrote: I solved the problem for our pipeline by writing a tool which is similar to GATOR but runs as a command instead of an operator. The advantage is the tool can operate on selected subcomponents instead of the entire mesh. A further embellishment I exposed was different methods for searching the source mesh for envelope weights. The user was free to move between built-in methods such as closest location, raycast, closest vertex, … as well as other custom criteria I devised myself. I also wrote a dedicated clothing transfer tool which allows weights to be painted on our main character, then transferred and refit onto the other characters while accounting for changes in proportions of limbs and torso, for example. It’s a very solvable problem if you crack open the script editor. Matt *From:*softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Siew Yi Liang *Sent:* Monday, February 17, 2014 10:29 AM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: Paint weights across multiple envelopes? And symmetry mapping errors The problem is...my mesh is already split up into pieces when i was starting to weight them. The full body mesh doesn't exist anymore, the hidden faces are already gone. :X Also I tried duplicating all the geometry and merging it together while trying to preserve the existing weighting so I could continue working on it and then GATOR the weights back to the seperated geo later, but merging the geo together even while transferring all attributes seemed to remove the weighting from the character entirely... I'm wondering if I should just bite the bullet and paint the weights manually at this point via numerical input. It's a pain, but right now I don't know of any other method that wouldn't be overly troublesome, short of modeling the hidden polys again and combining them back into the body mesh. The lack of ability to mirror weights on the head is going to be a real pain to get the rig to behave symmetrically though. Hopefully the paint tools get an update eventually for this sort of thing...I never even knew painting across multiple meshes was an issue, no wonder it's recommend to model unibody in XSI. Oh well, something new every day! :P Thanks for the advice all! Yours sincerely, Siew Yi Liang On 2/17/2014 3:14 AM, Greg Maguire wrote: This is my preferred method too. ILM had a really cool concept I'd like to see in Soft. Instead of painting with the radius of a circle, make the brush three dimensional like a ball. Wings can be tricky, I generally chop the top or bottom part of a wing off and Gator everything. However a 3D ball would remove that need. On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 11:08 AM, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com mailto:mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com wrote: You dont even have to merge them, gator will manage just fine for example: paint weigh on full body mesh duplicate body mesh and delete all non seen polys, you dont need them, but you can jstu skip this and just keep full body mesh if you dont mind having not seen polygons, maybe even better if cloth materials have sometranslucency then GATOR shirt, pants.. any other cloth or prop object. It iwill follow full body mehsh just fine Tweak here or there if needed but in mosta case it works pretty fine On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 11:43 AM, Peter Agg peter@googlemail.com mailto:peter@googlemail.com wrote: Yep, I do as Mirko does for this stuff, the envelope
Re: Paint weights across multiple envelopes? And symmetry mapping errors....
When gatoring between identical point placements, don't forget to change your mode to Closest Vertex to get the most accurate transfer. On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 3:16 PM, Siew Yi Liang soni...@gmail.com wrote: @Matt Morris: I didn't know that actually, that is fantastic! Going to try it ASAP~ @Matt Lind: I know, I should pick up more scripting knowledge... I only just started recently working with the XSI API (and python in general), so gimme a chance to catch up to you guys :D @Eric: That explains it. I was wondering why it was working with my main biped rig but not with the facial rig. (my biped rig is using nulls for deformers but I found out about implicit bones halfway and wanted to use them to see if I could then have a distinct type for them so that my controls could be selected using the null selection filter and my deformers using the bone filter instead.) So would you would recommend sticking with nulls/standard bones for defomers? Thanks a ton guys! Once I get a chance in the next few days I'll try GATORing the weights over to a merged mesh, edit them, and then bring them back to the main mesh. Yours sincerely, Siew Yi Liang On 2/17/2014 11:37 AM, Eric Thivierge wrote: In regards to the Symmetry Map not working, if you are using the implicit bones as you've said previously it won't work because they haven't fixed this script to compensate for using this object type which was only introduced with ICE Kinematics. It's been requested quite a few times but I haven't seen it fixed yet, then again I don't use the implicit bones much. Eric T. On Monday, February 17, 2014 2:27:26 PM, Matt Lind wrote: I solved the problem for our pipeline by writing a tool which is similar to GATOR but runs as a command instead of an operator. The advantage is the tool can operate on selected subcomponents instead of the entire mesh. A further embellishment I exposed was different methods for searching the source mesh for envelope weights. The user was free to move between built-in methods such as closest location, raycast, closest vertex, ... as well as other custom criteria I devised myself. I also wrote a dedicated clothing transfer tool which allows weights to be painted on our main character, then transferred and refit onto the other characters while accounting for changes in proportions of limbs and torso, for example. It's a very solvable problem if you crack open the script editor. Matt *From:*softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.comsoftimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Siew Yi Liang *Sent:* Monday, February 17, 2014 10:29 AM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: Paint weights across multiple envelopes? And symmetry mapping errors The problem is...my mesh is already split up into pieces when i was starting to weight them. The full body mesh doesn't exist anymore, the hidden faces are already gone. :X Also I tried duplicating all the geometry and merging it together while trying to preserve the existing weighting so I could continue working on it and then GATOR the weights back to the seperated geo later, but merging the geo together even while transferring all attributes seemed to remove the weighting from the character entirely... I'm wondering if I should just bite the bullet and paint the weights manually at this point via numerical input. It's a pain, but right now I don't know of any other method that wouldn't be overly troublesome, short of modeling the hidden polys again and combining them back into the body mesh. The lack of ability to mirror weights on the head is going to be a real pain to get the rig to behave symmetrically though. Hopefully the paint tools get an update eventually for this sort of thing...I never even knew painting across multiple meshes was an issue, no wonder it's recommend to model unibody in XSI. Oh well, something new every day! :P Thanks for the advice all! Yours sincerely, Siew Yi Liang On 2/17/2014 3:14 AM, Greg Maguire wrote: This is my preferred method too. ILM had a really cool concept I'd like to see in Soft. Instead of painting with the radius of a circle, make the brush three dimensional like a ball. Wings can be tricky, I generally chop the top or bottom part of a wing off and Gator everything. However a 3D ball would remove that need. On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 11:08 AM, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com mailto:mirkoj.anima...@gmail.commirkoj.anima...@gmail.com wrote: You dont even have to merge them, gator will manage just fine for example: paint weigh on full body mesh duplicate body mesh and delete all non seen polys, you dont need them, but you can jstu skip this and just keep full body mesh if you dont mind having not seen polygons, maybe even better if cloth materials have sometranslucency
Re: Paint weights across multiple envelopes? And symmetry mapping errors....
If you're using the implicit bones with success and don't need any of the benefits of the Softimage bone chains just use Nulls. It's typically what Im using. Eric T. On Monday, February 17, 2014 3:16:29 PM, Siew Yi Liang wrote: @Matt Morris: I didn't know that actually, that is fantastic! Going to try it ASAP~ @Matt Lind: I know, I should pick up more scripting knowledge... I only just started recently working with the XSI API (and python in general), so gimme a chance to catch up to you guys :D @Eric: That explains it. I was wondering why it was working with my main biped rig but not with the facial rig. (my biped rig is using nulls for deformers but I found out about implicit bones halfway and wanted to use them to see if I could then have a distinct type for them so that my controls could be selected using the null selection filter and my deformers using the bone filter instead.) So would you would recommend sticking with nulls/standard bones for defomers? Thanks a ton guys! Once I get a chance in the next few days I'll try GATORing the weights over to a merged mesh, edit them, and then bring them back to the main mesh. Yours sincerely, Siew Yi Liang On 2/17/2014 11:37 AM, Eric Thivierge wrote: In regards to the Symmetry Map not working, if you are using the implicit bones as you've said previously it won't work because they haven't fixed this script to compensate for using this object type which was only introduced with ICE Kinematics. It's been requested quite a few times but I haven't seen it fixed yet, then again I don't use the implicit bones much. Eric T. On Monday, February 17, 2014 2:27:26 PM, Matt Lind wrote: I solved the problem for our pipeline by writing a tool which is similar to GATOR but runs as a command instead of an operator. The advantage is the tool can operate on selected subcomponents instead of the entire mesh. A further embellishment I exposed was different methods for searching the source mesh for envelope weights. The user was free to move between built-in methods such as closest location, raycast, closest vertex, … as well as other custom criteria I devised myself. I also wrote a dedicated clothing transfer tool which allows weights to be painted on our main character, then transferred and refit onto the other characters while accounting for changes in proportions of limbs and torso, for example. It’s a very solvable problem if you crack open the script editor. Matt *From:*softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Siew Yi Liang *Sent:* Monday, February 17, 2014 10:29 AM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: Paint weights across multiple envelopes? And symmetry mapping errors The problem is...my mesh is already split up into pieces when i was starting to weight them. The full body mesh doesn't exist anymore, the hidden faces are already gone. :X Also I tried duplicating all the geometry and merging it together while trying to preserve the existing weighting so I could continue working on it and then GATOR the weights back to the seperated geo later, but merging the geo together even while transferring all attributes seemed to remove the weighting from the character entirely... I'm wondering if I should just bite the bullet and paint the weights manually at this point via numerical input. It's a pain, but right now I don't know of any other method that wouldn't be overly troublesome, short of modeling the hidden polys again and combining them back into the body mesh. The lack of ability to mirror weights on the head is going to be a real pain to get the rig to behave symmetrically though. Hopefully the paint tools get an update eventually for this sort of thing...I never even knew painting across multiple meshes was an issue, no wonder it's recommend to model unibody in XSI. Oh well, something new every day! :P Thanks for the advice all! Yours sincerely, Siew Yi Liang On 2/17/2014 3:14 AM, Greg Maguire wrote: This is my preferred method too. ILM had a really cool concept I'd like to see in Soft. Instead of painting with the radius of a circle, make the brush three dimensional like a ball. Wings can be tricky, I generally chop the top or bottom part of a wing off and Gator everything. However a 3D ball would remove that need. On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 11:08 AM, Mirko Jankovic mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com mailto:mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com wrote: You dont even have to merge them, gator will manage just fine for example: paint weigh on full body mesh duplicate body mesh and delete all non seen polys, you dont need them, but you can jstu skip this and just keep full body mesh if you dont mind having not seen polygons, maybe even better if cloth materials have sometranslucency then GATOR shirt, pants.. any other cloth or prop object. It iwill follow full body mehsh just fine Tweak here or there if needed
