HAir weighting

[Spinell]

EDIT: Changes due to... nudity issues?

 

Can I get some tips or weighting?

I found this free mesh hair in a 3D model website and did some modifications to it, but unfortunatly this thing is not very well built. Or at least, not for SL. I simply can't weight paint it because of the vertices.

So, the only way I could think of rigging it was to go to the vertice rgoups after parenting the mesh to the armature and manuallyy assign weights. I've done this before with clothing, especially skirts with lots of frills where weight painting is a nightmare, but it's not working that well with the hair. Take a look:

 

Any suggestions for hair weighting? I want the curls at the front to stay reletively still while the rest moves with the head and neck bones.

Also, the avatar's skull seemes to be peaking out and I'm not sure why; when I move the bones in blender, that never happens.

[Coby Foden]

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Spinell wrote:

Can I get some tips or weighting?

I found this free mesh hair in a 3D model website and did some modifications to it, but unfortunatly this thing is not very well built.

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Well, honestly I agree, that "hair" looks very badly built.  No wonder that it was a free model.  :smileysurprised:

It would be a nightmare trying to make it to look good in any way.

 

Better to start from scratch.  Saves a lot of pain, frustration and tears.  On the other hand, trying make a long rigged mesh hair to resemble even slightly a real hair is not an easy task.  It will always have that sicky non-flowing look and feel to it.  For shorts hairs mesh can be good, but personally I feel that long hairs are still best made out of flexi prims.

 

 

Badly built mesh hairs remind me of this image:  :matte-motes-big-grin:  :smileywink:

 

[Rahkis Andel]

I'm not sure what you mean by "Because of the vertices".

I'm guessing you are meaning to say that there is a lot of mesh density, which is quite likely! It's really not reccomended that you take something from elsewhere and try to directly upload it into second life, because of issues like this. If it's not made for a real-time environment, it's going to be hard to bring it over.

Even if you tried to make it SL ready, you'd probably ruin the UV's and would have to re-texture it by hand and it just wouldn't be worth the effort.

If you could share a wireframe of the hair, that would be useful to see what we're dealing with. If it seemed like there was an easy fix, I'd be glad to give it a shot if you linked me to the files as well.

Edit: I got ninja'd on that one, but I agree with the above; for hair past the shoulders, flexi-prims start to be the better option.

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

I can't quite decide if it looks more like a low poly model. And maybe just has a few polygons and vertices to be influenced.

The lower hairstrands look like being rather just some faces.
And i'm also not 100% sure what you mean with 'because of the vertices'

So i am joining the request for a wireframe screenshot ; )


PS: be aware that not every model is fitting for every game engine or purpose. Especially when its made o be a very low poly, or a too high poly it may simple fail to be made usable or only with extensive changes, which leads to the conclusion: in most cases its easier to make own models, specifically designed for the requirements and limits of a certain engine.
And downloadable models can also be either made as 'static prop' not having any topology which is supportive for rigging, or they could have been made for an engine where a special hair skeleton would be possible to add / or already included.

[Spinell]

Hope you can sort of see it:

 

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

Hey spinell,

it doesn't even look too extreme high poly so far. 
Even though it has a few areas that are more dense (like in the curves) and thus might have stronger influences / different behavior then the other parts. (unless they aren't showing up on the screenie - because the Wireframe-View 'ate' half of the edges again, it tends to do that ^^)

 

I still can't see why you can't weightpaint it based on - as you said - it's vertices. Other than that its of course allways fiddly when you have many layers of mesh and have to paint amongst them.

For that case i'd suggest using these little buttons here in weightpaint mode. They allow you to 'select' first (with RMT+Rightclick and holding shift if you want to select more) either faces or vertices to paint on, and thus prevent nearby other faces / vertices being accidentally painted as well:




You could also start by parenting the hair with automatic weights. And then just finetune and tweak the rest (With help of those little buttons). In that case you don't have to paint and assign every single weight by hand at first. And you can also still adjust the all over weights on the vertices in Editmode  directly to do the refining.

 

The fact that the top of the hair sinks into the skull can either be too intense weights on that spot and less around it. Or even an accidentally assigned influence towards a further away bone (shoulders, neck etc) causing it to be contracted downwards when being in movement.

However / To consider: This hair due to it's 'flat' model structure is rather disadvantageous for SL purposes. And surely made more for game engines where you can add specular and normal maps etc to create the 'optical volume' of the hair. It looks much like a prop for The Sims or similar structured games / engines. And when you inspect the generic models for SL hair, as well as their Sculpty equivalents they all are more based on cylindrical hair strings which contract at the tips. This makes up for the missing capability of specular, normal, and other maps, as well for the way the rigging influences them. 
Its flat structure is also not so much optimal for the rigging situation in SL and as you can see it doesn#t look nice when those flat strings are being bend, and knicked.

But if you still want to use it. You should be absolutely able to rig and weight this. See tips above.
If not try to describe a bit more what exactly is troubling you with the vertices. Little tip for that be very soft with the weights in the lower areas (not much weight / heat) to prevent from too crazy and strong movements on the topology and keep it really tight and strong weighted at the head. And be precise with he horizontal separation for the influences. (head, neck , chest)

 

[Rahkis Andel]

I don't think that hair looks poorly built at all. As Codewarrior said, it looks like it just wasn't intended for SecondLife purposes.

I can't really add anything more than this, so good luck!

[Spinell]

Ok, I actually found out why I ouldn't weight paint it. A very stupid mistake from my part: I must have accidently shiften to the subtract brush (I wanted to remove some red parts) but by mistake turned the weight of the brush to 0. No wonder it wansn't paiting anything.

Now I can weight paint it no problem and I'm managing to rig it nicely.

As a curiosity, the file came in OBJ when I download it and it does kinda look like a prop. And yeah, most likely it was meant to be used with a normals map.

...Why can't SL acomodate normal maps?! T_T I want a better system to create in, dammit!!!

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

.. they are working on it ; )
http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Tools-and-Technology/New-Open-Source-Project-to-Improve-Graphics-Rendering/ba-p/1637559

PS: i'm  glad you found your little mistake =)

PS2: qoute ...I want a better system to create in, dammit!!! ...
well the UDK pack is free for personal usage and so is Ogre and Source and Unity. That should give you enough at hand to make your better system ^.-