Weightmap Issues

[Springheel]

Squill, (or anyone else who knows about weightmaps)

 

I'm looking ahead to getting characters rigged for the new skeleton. I was hoping you could help me with a few questions.

 

1. Normalizing Weightmaps. The Lightwave Plugin that I use automatically normalizes weightmaps when I export back to md5mesh. This essentially means that the influences on any single vert are modified to equal 100%. In other words, if the vert had 3 bones influencing it at 100% each, those would be reduced to 33.3% each on normalization.

 

Does Maya do something similar to this? I haven't noticed any problems thus far, but I'm wondering whether incompatibilities could creep in.

 

2. I was talking with an animator friend of mine who uses Maya, and he was telling me about a plugin that allows you to export and import weightmap information. In other words, you could take a mesh, save the weightmap information, add a different skeleton to the mesh, and import the weightmaps. You'd have to deal with the places the names don't match up, but it seems like it could be a big time-saver, rather than having to reskin our characters from scratch. Are you familiar with this at all?

[Springheel]

Ok, after a bit more research, I've found this plugin: http://www.geocities.com/bazhutkin/

 

If you don't have UV of your polygonal model or you want to save skin or cluster weights into file with a high accuracy, use this script for weight export and import. Script generates ASCII text file.

 

Export / Import weights for selected polygonal or NURBS object. Select cluster node in Channel Box if cluster deformer is not unique for this object.

Export / Import weights of skinCluster for each joint or selected joints that affects the selected polygonal or NURBS object.

 

I don't know enough about Maya to know if this would be useful, but I know that rigging is going to be the biggest bottleneck in terms of getting new characters ready. Anything that could speed up that process would be great.

[Domarius]

On the new mesh, I used partial weighting to get the bum bending right when the leg was raised. But that was the only spot where I used it, and I think I weighted the verts 50% evenly between two bones. So maybe it will be okay.

 

But in my experience I've found it's better in the long run to just learn the new software, rather than mess with exporters and encounter all the quirks and incompatabilites that arise. If all you need to do is weight verts, that is pretty simple. I'll write up a little tutorial if you want?

[Springheel]

There's already Ascottk's tutorial on the wiki, which is quite good. Painting weightmaps in Maya isn't difficult, just time consuming. I don't want to be stuck in a position where you can't make changes to the mesh or skeletong without redoing the weightmap, however, which is why I was asking about the exporter.

[Domarius]

I'm pretty sure I can modify the geometry without re-weighting the whole thing... I can do it in max for sure, and I'm pretty sure I was doing it for the proguard in maya, I'll double check though. I'd be surprised if it can't be done.

[squill]

Springheel,

 

Maya has an option to normalize the weights. I've never used it because i usually go in to component editor to change the weight values.

 

A colleague of mine also uses a weight export plugin for his character rigs in Maya. It doesn't look like the same script you linked to but it has a similar function to what you described. Tomorrow I'll ask him what this plugin is called because i had to do the same thing before with the proguard and using Maya's own export tool is not really an option.

 

The mirror skin weights function is also an essential tool to speed up the skinning process. How long does it take for you now to weight paint a character?

[Springheel]

The mirror skin weights function is also an essential tool to speed up the skinning process. How long does it take for you now to weight paint a character?

 

Yes, I haven't used that before but I know I should. Once I'm finished with the weapon set, I'm going to get moving on finishing weighting the nobleman. I think I've been having such slow progress because I'm trying to match the proguard weights exactly, rather than just using what looks good during deform testing.

[Domarius]

I'd just be doing what looks good, I don't see why you'd have to match it exactly, especially since the geometry is different anyway.