When rigging, screen flashes & never copies weights from avi to clothing

[Sienia Trevellion]

I've been learning to make mesh and I finally attempted to rig my clothing last night, but ran into the same problem on two different computers. When I'm at minute 3 on this great video from Shasekayi: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ff0aSLtzeVE

... it has me choose: Object -> Scripts Bone Weight Copy - but when I do this instead of copying the weights from the avatar to my dress... the screen flashes an outline around the mesh and the avatar off and on and also flashes the link and materials/mesh/multries and modifiers tabs off and on constantly. It never shows progress on the header bar either.

I left it for several hours wondering if it would finish processing but it didn't, so I guess it is getting stuck or crashing on me. I'll also note that this is in blender 2.49. Is this a RAM issue possibly? I was only running blender and usually I can run so many other heavy programs I can't imagine that would be the problem, Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign not to mention SL all at once. Anyhow, any tips, thoughts or help is appreciated!

Last thing: If someone can tell me how to do the scripts bone weight copying in 2.66 I would love you forever and spoil you with adoration and freebies.

 

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

Could also be that the copy boneweights scripts you have are for a different / newer blender version. But most likely in that case they shouldn't have been able to be activated.

To solve your issue I'd suggest this:

The last and latest version of blender working with the copy weight scripts is 2.65 a )
(from 2.66 on they don't work anymore. Blender has now a native inbuild transfer weights function)

Blender 2.65a you can download here: http://download.blender.org/release/Blender2.65/

and the fitting copy boneweights scripts here:http://blog.machinimatrix.org/bone-weight-copy-in-blender-2-52-6/
(space_view3d_copy_bone_weight_enhanced.py)

Or you switch directly to 2.66 and use the inbuild transfer weights tool.

2.49 is really outdated by now. You can keep it as secondary installation. (just make sure to install the new blender version into a different folder location) in case you still want to keep the old one.

It might be that something computational goes wrong with the newer OS on your computer and the older Blender version.
But it should work just fine with the combinations described above. Plus the above named blender versions also now have a operator preset for exporting SecondLife riggs, and native Collada export. So even more good reasons to switch =)

[Sienia Trevellion]

Thank you so much! I only used 2.49 so that I could match up what was in the video, learn, and not miss a step, otherwise I get confused as I'm still learning my way around blender. I've been working in 2.66 otherwise. That said, let me download 2.65 and try again. I've been getting around great with the actual creation of the meshes in blender, but it's the rigging and such that I've had trouble with. Most tutorials are in older version and I can't always find the new way to do things even after consulting blender cookie and books. Cross your fingers, I will update everyone on the results.

[Sienia Trevellion]

I successfully downloaded blender 2.65. I installed the script and followed Gaia's directions to copy bone weights. No more flashing screen. Now after changing the interpolation to 2 and clicking on "only named bones" and "copy empty groups" and finally "copy bone weights", it's still processing. Everyone says it takes a very long time...but can I ask how long does it take on average? 2 hours long? Mine has been going for that long and I'm wondering if that's normal.

I'm worried I may have made a mistake in the steps up to copying bone weights and am hoping someone can tell me if I'm doing it right or not. In Shasekayi's video:

using 2.49 she shows you how to parent the shirt she creates to the armature (control p) and then tells you to not create groups. In blender 2.65 it appears to be a bit different and I'm not sure what to choose. I chose "Armature Deform ->With Empty Groups" as a guess. Sample snapshots using a simple shape below...

 

2.49

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2.65

[Rahkis Andel]

If she said to parent it without creating groups, she probably meant to parent to object, without setting it to deform to the armature at all.

Perhaps she asked you to do that so that you can add in the groups by hand.

I see no reason not to use empty groups, though. If the bones don't wind up getting an influence over anything, no harm was done.

Edit: And no, I can't think of anything short of rendering an animation or really high res image that should take more than 2 hours. It probably crashed. Maybe?

What are your computer specs? That may not be important -- I'm not sure what the script is actually doing. I use 2.66 that has it's own native weight transfer script, so it's kind of moot. Perhaps use that instead? If you need a step by step instruction, I could do that at some point.

[Gaia Clary]

Parent to armature deform with empty groups is correct. indeed this wil not even delete the groups if they already exist. And it guarantees that all necessary groups do realy exist.

Now... normaly a weight copy takes a few seconds. if your weight copy runs for hours then you either have a giant mesh or a slow computer or not enough memory or something is broken, unexpected, not correctly selected, unintentionally duplicated multiple times, ... i admit that's a lot of maybe's ;-(  ...

How many faces has your mesh ?

[Sienia Trevellion]

Thank you for your response! I will try it again, the mesh is low poly so perhaps it's a glitch. I was hesitant to post about it, but all of you have been a great help, it's much appreciated.

*I'm editing this response to add that the faces are currently at 214 which I believe to be low poly but I thought I better post just in case I'm wrong about that. I have a subsurf modifer on it, could that create a problem once I apply it? I was also contemplating adding solidify to it to create an inside to the dress.

[Sienia Trevellion]

I would love to get a step by step for the native transfer script in 2.66 if it isn't too much trouble. Obviously when you have time and I'm sure others could use it as well. My computer is pretty solid so I'm guessing it's a freak crash and will try this again. I had played around with some modifiers and perhaps forgot to delete one, so I'll check that as well. Thank you for your help!

[Sienia Trevellion]

Success! Thank you everyone

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

Hey Sierra,

glad we could help. 

And yes parenting with empty groups is not wrong. It's normally used when you want to add weights yourself (independent from the created groups) by copying or by painting them after assigning just those empty groups.

PS: If you grab one of the latest Workbench files from here: http://blog.machinimatrix.org/avatar-workbench/ (make sure to get the right one for your new blender version) then you can even skip the steps for adding the missing Toe groups. (which was still a step in the old tutorials) the workbench includes one female avatar plus female armature, one male avatar plus male armature and one avatar from make human, and includes basically everything you need to rig your objects.

 

Cheers, Code =)

[Rahkis Andel]

---

Sienia Trevellion wrote:

I would love to get a step by step for the native transfer script in 2.66 if it isn't too much trouble. Obviously when you have time and I'm sure others could use it as well. My computer is pretty solid so I'm guessing it's a freak crash and will try this again. I had played around with some modifiers and perhaps forgot to delete one, so I'll check that as well. Thank you for your help!

---

It's not much trouble at all. It's as simple as selecting the objects and clicking a button. It may  not happen today, but over the weekend, not a problem.

Good luck.

[Sienia Trevellion]

That sounds great, you rock!

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

Heya Sienia,

you wanted a step-by-step for the new transfer weights tool in blender 2.66.

There really isnt much to it.

1) you will find it natively when in weight-paint mode in the tool-shell

2) the followup is the same: Select your source  first and then add-select the target object, and run the tool.

3) additionally blender has a few new weight features in 2.66 like gradient, and some other new functions.
More infos here : http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Modeling/Meshes/Weight_Paint.

Cheers =)

[Sienia Trevellion]

This is great and really is much simpler than I imagined. Now I can get to rigging all the things I've created, yay! You don't happen to know of a thread that shows how to make an alpha for your mesh clothing in 2.65 or 2.66 do you? I'm using the standard size avatar meshes and they seem to be one object, not 3 (head, torso, lower body) so I wasn't able to successfully follow Ashasekayi's video on that. I can make it by hand visually using the avatar mesh as a suit in SL but it seems there is a better or more efficient and accurate way like in her video. Just can't seem to find it for 2.65 or 2.66 yet. Going to dive into videos and threads to see what I can find.

 

 

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

Heya,

making an alpha layer is independend from Blender anyways : )
if you make a dress for a default avatar (male or female) all you need to do is to create an Aplhatexture (or several textures for the needed bodyparts, head, upper body, lower body, gloves, socks etc) that will 'cover' the area you want to hide on the avatar.

You do this in an Image editor (GIMP or Photoshop i.e.)

How to make one - here is a tutorial: http://www.brinksie.com/2011/04/07/how-to-make-an-alpha-layer/

The combiniation into an SL item to cover you simply make after uploading these images to SL. And in the inventoty >  create new clothing item > new Alphalayer. Here you can combine them all for a whole Bodysuit. or just drop the parts in that you want to assign such a texture to.

Regarding your request to have the regular default Avatars (which are in 3 pieces. plus eyes, lashes, ruthed hair and skirt), go back to one of my last answers and follow my suggestion to download the 'avatar workbench' for blender.

PS: the reason why Ashasekayi combined them is due to being able to copy the weights from them onto a new object that possibly goes over more then just one of the 3 bodyparts (like most shirts also reach the lower belly, and up to the neck)

So its generally a good idea to make yourself one combined avatar and put it into an extra layer.

 

But go ahead and grab the avatar workbench for your blender version and you will have all default avatars (male / female) and their skeletons. Means everything you need to rig and create worn meshes. (just in case, here is the link again: http://blog.machinimatrix.org/avatar-workbench/ )

[Sienia Trevellion]

Thanks for your response once again - I think I owe you! I also don't think I explained myself clearly. I downloaded the standard sizes from the marketplace so that my offerings will be standard and fit the most sizes on the grid possible. I want to be able to offer standard L, M, S, XS and XXS.

This is the link: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Standard-Sizing-Package-Updated-Male-Female/2894727

I also downloaded the workbench, it's awesome. So what I need to do is use the sizes I downloaded above with the functionality of the workbench. I'm thinking I can just load the sizes into the workbench file and copy the weights there. The standard sizes are the ones that don't have the three separate body parts. Just wanted to clarify.

I'm well versed in Photoshop so the alpa for the meshes shouldn't be a problem, I just thought there might be a way to work in blender and actually select the area of the mesh clothing to create a perfectly shaped UV there, then work with it in Photoshop. I hope I'm making sense. Ashasekayi does it in her tutorial but it was done in version 2.49.

*Update: If I import each shape in as an .obj file, they actually do have the head, torso and lower body separate. So this is perfect, solves literally everything I need. Just tried it.

THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

hey. yeah seeing what your doing.

all the standard models of this file are basically having the same UV map that the SL default avatar uses.

But if you want to cover a certain area to 'bake' the result as texture. (by giving certain polygons a color i.e. like some parts black and the rest white, according to what exactly you want to hide) Which is exactly what she does.
But also in her tut she finishes it in an image editor.

I personally think directly just loading the Avtar UV maps (which are linked in the Alphatutorial  i posted you in the last answer) into Photoshop and just painting directly your black / white areas there, then hide the UV layout image and create the Alphalayer, is faster then doing all the steps before in Blender with the same outcome.

 

But in case you want to do it that way, it's still as she described it. The Options for material, UV / Texture and Bake are just in different spots in the UI now:

To assign a new material to the bodyparts you just have to go here:
- create a new material with the + button
- then again on new > material, name it 
- select on your model all polygons you want to assign and hit 'assign'
- also in the material tab you can set the colors. (like red as she used it)

To get to the UV window, just open a new panel or use any existing one and choose on the icon dropdown list:
UV/Image Editor.
- here you will also find the 'create new texture' (NEW)
- and the save image as under the IMAGE menu.


to bake the texture at the end, switch to the render tab in the properties panel:
- set the bake to 'texture' 
- and 'selected to active' and bake to your new texture


- to overpaint the texture return to the UV-Image editor shown above, and on that button that says 'VIEW' click it and choose PAINT. this enables you to do the needed corrections before saving the image as TGA or PNG.

That should be all you need to reproduce her steps in 2.66.

Or you just paint directly in Photoshop only as suggested. 

Cheers : )

[Nalates Urriah]

With Blender there is an ARCHIVE install that makes upgrading much easier. All the Blender and Python programs and files are kept in one folder. You can have as many versions installed as you want and they do not conflict with one another.

You can get more information here: Blender Archive Install.

I still have 2.49 installed for special use with some older games.

I also tend to keep 1 or 2 versions back installed. Every now and then some change fails to work with SL. That also lets me check if something is broken in the new viewer or if I am doing something wrong.

When you open old files with a new version of Blender, BE SURE you uncheck Load UI. If you don't things can get really messed up.

[Nalates Urriah]

I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to give us tech specs for your computer when asking tech questions. Saying its pretty solid doesn't say much to us.

If you have a good nVidia video card you can turn on CUDA and Blender speeds up a great deal, depending on task. File->User Prefs->System (tab)->Computing Device (panel section).

In general for what I am seeing in your picture, I think 10 minutes would be slow.

[Sienia Trevellion]

Fantastic! I love you!

[Sienia Trevellion]

That's really cool, thank you for the archive information. I will definitely check that out. You also make a great point about the computer specs *blush*, next time I'll offer it up in a quickness

[Gaia Clary]

Hi.

I always wanted to do the quick tip about another creative method to create an Alpha Mask. You reminded me to do that. And here it is:

Please note: I used the newest development version of blender. It may be posible that official releases still have trouble with the Alpha  channel. But Blender 2.67 will have it as shown in the video.

Have fun,

Gaia

[Sienia Trevellion]

This is great, thanks Gaia!

[Rahkis Andel]

Well, I guess I just don't need to do ANYTHING do I? I love this forum.

Cheers.

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

lol awwweeee Rahkis =) the good will counts too y'know ^.^