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...@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
--
*Greg Maguire* | Inlifesize
Mobile: +44 7512 361462 | Phone: +44 2890 204739
g...@inlifesize.com
<mailto:g...@inlifesize.com>|www.inlifesize.com
<http://www.inlifesize.com>
