bento Help with Bento Tail

[Mimaaah]

Hi,

To simply sum it up, I'm trying to make my first Bento tail. I want it to be longer and larger than the default bone set up for the tail and from what people have told me, modifying the bones is possible because when uploading, I can include joint positions. My issue is is that when I modify the bones, it deforms my mesh badly and the tail does not move exactly with the bones, even when I manually paint the weights for them.

Without modifying the Tail bones and using automatic weights, it works fine.

But then if I try to resize the tail, it does not bend correctly.

Manually fixing the weights after I have resized the skeleton doesn't work either.

I want to know if there is a correct way to resize the tail bones without this happening and if not, how to make the tail larger and longer.

Thanks.

[Pirschjaeger Fassbinder]

Are you using Avastar or the Avatar Workbench? I would probably resize the tail mesh separately and then lengthen the tail bones by moving the bone heads and tails in Edit Mode to fit the resized tail mesh. If it's in Avastar, I would need to know what version to give more specifics. 

[Mimaaah]

5 hours ago, Pirschjaeger Fassbinder said:

Are you using Avastar or the Avatar Workbench? I would probably resize the tail mesh separately and then lengthen the tail bones by moving the bone heads and tails in Edit Mode to fit the resized tail mesh. If it's in Avastar, I would need to know what version to give more specifics. 

I'm using Blender 2.78c and Avastar version 2RC4 though I may update to the latest, 2RC7.

I have resized the tail and then the bones by moving the bone heads but once I parent it, it deforms badly like in the pictures above.

[Pirschjaeger Fassbinder]

You are getting the distortions because you are moving the bone heads and tails around in Pose Mode. You want to be in Edit Mode. Here is how I would approach it.

1.       Resize the tail mesh in Object Mode.

a.       Select the tail mesh and unbind it by selecting “Unbind from Armature” in the Skinning Tools.

b.       In either Pose Mode or Edit Mode with the armature selected, select the head of the Tail1 bone and hit Shift + S and then select Cursor to Selected. You should see the little red and white circle (the 3D cursor) at this bone head. Be careful not to click elsewhere in the 3D view or this will move the cursor.

c.       Select the tail mesh again and in the Tool tab and under the Edit section, select Set Origin and select “Origin to 3D Cursor”.

d.       While remaining in Object Mode, resize the tail mesh to your desired size. The base of the tail should remain at the head of the Tail1 bone.

e.       While remaining in Object Mode again, go to the Object menu in the header, then look for Apply. From that submenu, select Scale.

Note: You can also resize it in Edit Mode, but you will want to keep the 3D cursor at the head of Tail1 and have the pivot point set at 3D cursor. You can set it to do this by selecting the following:

 

Once you done resizing the mesh, you will probably want to return the pivot point back to “Median Point”.

2.       Move the heads and the tails of the tail bones to resize the bones in Edit Mode.

a.       First set the User Interface to “Expert”. It is located in the Avastar tab.

b.       With the armature selected, go to Edit Mode.

c.       Align the heads/tails of the tail bones to the resized tail mesh by selecting each bone head/tail and moving them in the Y direction. You will be only selecting the combined head of the bone and tail of the previous bone, and not the entire bone. It should look something like this when selected:

d.       When everything is aligned to where you want it, go to the Avastar tab and under the Posing section, look for the Rig Modify Tools subsection. Select “Snap Base to Rig” with at least the “Snap to SL Base” option selected.

e.       Then in the same Rig Modify Tools subsection, select “Store Joint Edits”.

3.       Rebind the tail mesh to the armature.

This is also covered in the Avastar documentation under here: http://avastar.online/fragment/joint-positions.

[Mimaaah]

I'm not sure what I was doing wrong (though I was resizing the bones in edit mode, I am unable to resize in pose mode) but those instructions helped! It might have been step 2e that I was missing though I was unable to complete 2d because that option does not appear for me? I was only able to store join edits which might have been what I was missing.

Either way, this worked and it follows the bones when I pose the tail. Thank you!

[Pirschjaeger Fassbinder]

You're welcome! I erroneously thought you were trying to resize them in pose mode. Since I am using RC7, I cannot recall if "Snap to SL Base" was missing or somewhere else in RC4. However, I am glad it works for you now!

[Violaine Villota]

I've been going nuts looking for that Snap to Rig or Snap to SL Base, I don't see either one and at least I know it's not just me. 
So will Store Joint Edits replace it?

[Mimaaah]

Using Avastar and in the settings, you have to have Experimental userface enabled and then with the selected bones you can store join edits and then snap base to rig. I'm not sure if snap base to rig is needed as I haven't uploaded or been working on this in a while but the store join edits works.

[Violaine Villota]

Thank you so much Mimaaah!  I will have to look into that when I go back to it  
Now, I also saw a menu for Control Bones in the same tutorial where the person used the Snap To SL Base feature, but I don't have anything called Control Bones in my version that I could see so maybe the Animation Bones are called something different in an older version or I just need to use the Experimental Settings preference. I thought I watched all the newest info but I must have missed that.