Rigged Mesh Distortion after Upload

[Annie Melson]

I normally make my mesh from scratch in Blender but I wanted to play around with Marvelous Designer. So I made a very simple pair of pants to try it out. However, when I import the finished product from MD into Blender it doesn't line up with the avastar in Blender. So I try to bake a new rest pose to reflect the different pose that is in MD, rig and weight it, and upload it into SL, but I end up with some distortion. Here is a pic to show what I mean. You can see the bottom of the pants don't line up with the legs.

 

I followed the directions Gaia Clary posted to another person on here regarding this, multiple times to make sure I wasn't missing a step somewhere. I always got the same outcome with this distortion. I updated Blender and Avastar. Still the same outcome. Here are the directions Gaia posted in another thread, and the ones I followed:

• Adjust the pose of the Avastar character to the pose which you prefer. That can be any pose you like
• I personally would now store this new "default pose" in a pose library. (See the "object data" properties section of the character armature) but you do not need to use a pose library..
• Adjust your garment to your "default pose" as needed.
• Do a weight copy from the Avastar weights to your garment
• In the tool shelf you now find the function you need to proceed: "Bake T Pose": This function actually transforms your mesh into an equivalent T-Posed form, such that when the current pose is applied to that transformed mesh, it will end up looking like your original mesh.

 

I'm sure there is just one tiny little thing I'm missing here to make this work. I just can't figure out what that tiny little thing is LOL! If anyone knows the answer I'd be very grateful. Thanks! :)

[Freya Mokusei]

I've no experience here (so I'll post links), but MD doesn't allow for rigging meshes. Rigging will therefore have to be done using Blender, Avastar or some other system in order for it to fit or move with your avatar.

It looks like you've done some of this, so maybe some of these links will explain the bit you've missed.

Sources:-

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Everything-Else/Marvelous-Designer-Help-with/qaq-p/2260181

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Using-Marvelous-Designer-for-SL/td-p/491633

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Creation/how-do-you-take-a-file-from-Marvelous-Designer-into-Blender/qaq-p/1960263

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/I-built-garment-does-not-move-correctly/m-p/2263223/highlight/true#M23954

[Annie Melson]

Yes, that's what I did - uploaded the MD object into Blender and rigged and weighted it. I know the problem is in the rest pose in blender. The poses are different from MD to Blender. So that's why I was trying to change the default rest pose in Blender to match the pose from MD, then rig and weight it. Everything worked fine in Blender, but when I upload the pants to SL, the distortion shows, which means something in the pose for rigging and weighting isn't right. Thank you for the links, I'll check them out.

[Freya Mokusei]

Best of luck! I'm sure someone will post with better ideas, I just remembered seeing a few MD threads around this week.

[Sassy Romano]

Avastar makes it much easier.

[Annie Melson]

I'm using Avastar....

[Gaia Clary]

The bake to rest pose function is a bit clunky in Avastar. This is because it needs weights on the mesh in order to operate. Avastar currently allows to use the predefined weightmaps from the Avastar character to control the "bake to rest pose" when your mesh has no weights yet. But this is just imperfect.

Actually what you should do is:

 

• Change the rest pose of the Avastar character temporary to match the pose of your mesh
• Then rig with empty weight groups, or with copy weights from Avastar as you prefer
• Then fix the weights to work properly
• set your rig to T-Pose
• Apply the armature to yur mesh
• Change the rest pose of the Avastar back to T-Pose
• Rig your mesh again, but this time only with empty weight groups

I know the problem is in the very first step. I will try to prepare a video on how this can be done. If you like i can make your pants the star of this video If you like that, then please send me your blend file so that i can use it as basis for the video.

 

[Annie Melson]

I will send you the blend file, Gaia. But be warned that it is very high in polycount. Since it was just an experiment I didn't reduce the polycount. You may want to reduce the poly for your video.

[Gaia Clary]

Hi, Annie;

You mentioned "High Poly count meshes" ... Actually there was a problem with rigging of high polycount meshes in Avastar 1.0 which could theoretically be the reason for your issue as well.

So if you use any version up to Avastar-1-0-873 then please could you also try to upgrade to the newest testversion avastar-1-1-903_blender-2-64.zip and see if it solvesyourproblems already ?

You find the mentioned Avastar version in the "testversions" subfolder of your download folder.

[Gaia Clary]

Hi again;

I have taken a quick look on your mesh and i was able to bake to T-Pose with weight copy and it looked all right so far. Except that the mesh topology itself is not optimal for animation with weights. But you probably know that already.

So...

• Do your troubles start already in blender (after rigging) or does this only happen after upload to SL ?
• When in SL do you use the default male shape or a custom shape ?

[Annie Melson]

Everything looks like it works properly in Blender after rigging. The trouble always started after uploading the mesh into SL. And I thought perhaps it might be a shape issue, so I tried all kinds of shapes, including the default one in SL. The same distortion happened. 

[Gaia Clary]

So i made this using Avastar-1-1-903:

 

• go to object mode
• select the pants and the armature
• Rig the mesh using the Rigging panel in the tool shelf and these options:
  
  - With weight Copy
  - Clear Target Weights
  - Sub Mesh interpolation
  - Alter Mesh to Rest Pose
  
  
• Export with the Avastar Collada exporter (default settings)
• Import to SL with Weights

 

And here is a snapshot:

So it basically works for me without any special treatments. The dark spots are the base mesh poking through the pants, but that happens also in blender and needs tweeking or alpha masking.

So by now i think the cause of your issue may be the bug  regarding rigging of high poly meshes in Avastar-1.0

[Annie Melson]

Thanks, Gaia! I updated Avastar but perhaps I downloaded the wrong one. I will check into that and give it another try after the weekend.

[Annie Melson]

That was the problem, Gaia! I must have updated the wrong version. It works perfectly fine now. Thank you so much for helping me with this problem. Glad to know I was doing everything right but just dealing with a bug.

[Annie Melson]

Gaia, I have run into another issue. Everything works fine with the weights attached to the bones, but if they are attached to the volume bones it distorts yet again. The volume weights want to go to the original rest pose. Does this only work for bone weights and not volume weights?

[Gaia Clary]

well, the support of the volume bones is really very very very experimental. And i only can warn you from using them. But who cares about warnings anyways...

So... i guess you just have forgotten to enable the deform option for the volume bones (in the bone properties window)

[Annie Melson]

Oh yes, I'm completely aware of the lack of support when it comes to the volume bones. I keep my eyes on that whole conversation. But this particular pair of pants is an experiment anyway, and I want to see how it all works - with everything. I like to learn new things.