Short skirt rigging issue

[VulpesVulpes666]

I have made skirt that goes to the knees,how to achieve not to get bleeding through effect and also not to use alphas to hide parts of legs cause it would look stupid,do i have to manualy weight paint the skirt or is there any other method to solve this problem,i've been messing with manual weight paint for quite a while but i never get the optimal result,does anyone know the secret of short skirt making without using alpha masking,i would really like to know that,thank you

[Sassy Romano]

The secret is spending long enough manually adjusting vertices and having just enough space between the avatar and the mesh to allow it to work.  If you want to do this without an alpha, there's no shortcut that I know of.

[Rolig Loon]

Right.  And then stand perfectly still.  Or at least don't take up strenuous exercise, like dancing, that is going to make your tail end poke through the skirt no matter how careful you have been.  If you do take up dancing, be sure to wear underwear or glitch pants.

[Medhue Simoni]

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VulpesVulpes666 wrote:

I have made skirt that goes to the knees,how to achieve not to get bleeding through effect and also not to use alphas to hide parts of legs cause it would look stupid,do i have to manualy weight paint the skirt or is there any other method to solve this problem,i've been messing with manual weight paint for quite a while but i never get the optimal result,does anyone know the secret of short skirt making without using alpha masking,i would really like to know that,thank you

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Can you post some images, cause I've rigged a few short skirts and I haven't seen many problems with them. I have many more issue with pants and long dress than with short skirts.

[VulpesVulpes666]

This is awful result when i generate weights from avastar meshes,it is even worse when weights are generated from the bones although there is a less texture distortion but more bleed through

[Sassy Romano]

Automatic weights are just that, you need to manually edit. You need to blend across the space between the legs or you will have a hard transition as per your picture.

 

You may get s better starting point by copying weights from the system skirt.

 

I'm going to guess that the item was made in marvelous designer. That means that manually adjusting vertices is a much more involved task due to the topology created. Retopologising would give you a simpler object to handle in terms of weights but you can achieve it with the weights brushes but individual vertex editing will be a pain.

[Gaia Clary]

Your pants obviously have intersections between the legs. That is why all copy weight methods create unsatisfying results. Furthermore the "system weights" from the Avatar meshes are just good for the SL Avatar and they do not work nixcely on custom meshes (in most cases)

Furthermore (as Sassy also mentions) whatever weights you copy, you have to adjust them afterwards to your custom mesh. There is no way out of that. However if your custom mesh has a good topology (a buzzword for "it has the faces just at the right places" :matte-motes-wink: ) then automatic weight from bones can give you a very good result, see here:

That's from a tutorial on which i am currently working, and all weights have been mostly generated automatically by Blender. btw: I think the boot['s mesh topology is still not the best, however this one works well for weighting.

Admited, my examples in the short video above are rather easy to weight, Puffy pants are much more problematic. One method that could work is:

 

• Spread the Avastar skeleton's legs apart sideways
• Make this the new rest pose
• Adjust your meshes to the new Avastar rest pose (so that no intersecting areas occur)
• Assign your mesh to the avastar with automatic weight from bones
• Detach the mesh again
• Delete the Avastar skeleton and all its meshes (i need to add a cleanup button, i know)
• Add a new Avastar
• Attach your mesh with "Alter to Rest Pose"

I know this is a bit of work. And i have plans to make this going much easier. But for now that is a possible way to get your weights done almost automatic. But beware: manual adjustments are part of the task!

 

I personally think it was a bad idea to support copy weights from Avatar. This method works only reasonably well if your meshes are very similar to the Avatar meshes, which is rarely the case.

[VulpesVulpes666]

Thank you Gaia for your reply,it is an honor,i respect you so much,could you just explain me what do you mean by adjusting mesh to new rest pose,do you mean to remodel mesh to fit that pose?and by making new rest pose do you mean to assign armature with alter to rest pose option?Best Regards

[Gaia Clary]

It may sound harsh, but i am speaking frankly and honestly: Please learn Blender, and the principles of animation first, then the tools will sudenly become much easier to use. Realy, the topic is by far too complex that it can be learned in a few hours.

Also if i would go into the details here, i just could write a tutorial as well But the plan is to allow assign to armature from any pose and thus make skinning a lot easier for more cases. (however, its not yet clear if that will be a change in Blender itself or in the addon)

So what you should do in the meantime:

 

• Spread the legs of the pants apart in editmode (by moving the verts) so that the pants are in A-Pose
• Google "rest pose" and how to change it in Blender.
• Then watch this (outdated) video:

 

 

to see what alter to restpose does. In the video it was still named "Bake T-Pose" and i just have seen that it is realy outdated i should not make soo many videos...

Anyways i hope that helps a bit.

[VulpesVulpes666]

Gaia excuse me and sorry for being boring but i'm not trying to rig pants but a short skirt,or maybe i misunderstood something,sorry for wasting your precious time:matte-motes-not-even:,and yes my knowledge of Blender is not perfect but i moved from Maya's UI to Blender's and most of the things are totally different,Blender it self is more SL frendly otherwise i would use Maya

[Gaia Clary]

Nothing to excuse. And i understand well, that moving from another tool to Blender is a challenge. I try the opposite direction and it is not at all easy...

[VulpesVulpes666]

I have found solution after a lot of experimenting, the trick is to combine weights from bones and meshes both but it still needs a bit of manual optimisation of vertex weights, this is how it looks now, uppermost part of the skirt needs a weight paint job

[Gaia Clary]

Oops, i have no idea why i have seen some sort of puffy pants in your first image. Well, yes, i would have proposed that as well, use weight from bones for the lower part, and copy weights from avatar in the upper part of the mesh. But glad you found that on your own.

And sorry for the confusion, all my fault :matte-motes-bashful-cute:

[Nalates Urriah]

You will also find that the walk animation has a huge effect on poke-through. The more a walk moves each foot is set on one of two parallel railroad rails, the less poke-through there is. As the walk animation moves toward a runway walk where the feet set down one in front of the other - like walking on a single rail, the more the inner leg tends to poke-through.

The sexier the walk the harder it is to avoid poke-through. 

One solution is to make small alpha layers that only alpha the poke-trough areas.

 

[Medhue Simoni]

Seems like you kind of fixed it. Your issue was the weight gradiant between the 2 thigh bones. The right thigh bone should be almost all red around the leg, and then fade very gradually to blue when it reaches the left thigh bone. The left thigh bone should do the opposite.

[Gaia Clary]

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Nalates Urriah wrote:

As the walk animation moves toward a runway walk where the feet set down one in front of the other - like walking on a single rail, the more the inner leg tends to poke-through.

The sexier the walk the harder it is to avoid poke-through. 

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You forgot the hips sway And actually... if the walk animation takes that into account then the poke through goes away again: