Issues Weight painting a Zipper

[Hittas]

So I have this bodysuit that I meshed, with a zipper on each side. When I rig it, the zipper moves, stretches, and all kinds of other things ( It looks pretty decent when you're not moving, but once you pose walk etc it starts moving weird ). I have been searching for a few days for a solution. I saw something that said rig the entire zipper to specific bones. When i do that, it doesn't move right with the clothing. Does anyone have any kind of advice, on how i can rig a zipper so it doesnt stretch, yet still moves perfectly with the clothing? Its not an actual rigged zipper where it opens and closes, its just a zipper i did in Zbrush that should stay pretty static for the most part. Any advice will help, Thanks.

Edited September 20, 2017 by Hittas
Mispelling

[Klytyna]

This has been a problem in just about every 3d rigging system ever. The only solution I can think of basically involves your first attempt, then you have to go through and make sure the weight mapping for every vertex in the zipper components is the same as every other vettex.

So, every vert in the zipper pull, has to have identical weight mapping to every other vert in the pull, every vert in any single zipper tooth has toexactly match every other vert in that tooth, and you do tyhis for every single tooth in the zipper,

it's tedious, time consuming and fiddly.

It's like weight mapping say, a nipple ring, the whole ring uses the weight mapping of the center point of the nipple, rather than a spread of similar weight maps that you'd use with the nipple itself or clothes over it, so the ring does not deform atall, when it moves with the body.

You can see why many peole make 'zippers' as a simple 'strip',  where the weighting for the verts on one side exactly matches the weighting for the verts on the other side, so the whole strip maintains width and does not horizontally stretch, then use texture/normal/spec maps to define the 'interlocked teeth', with a mono weighted pull at one end.

Applications like poser had a tool in the rigging options to try and do this for you, as I recall, in the 'dynamic cloth room'.

 

Edited September 20, 2017 by Klytyna

[Hittas]

11 hours ago, Klytyna said:

This has been a problem in just about every 3d rigging system ever. The only solution I can think of basically involves your first attempt, then you have to go through and make sure the weight mapping for every vertex in the zipper components is the same as every other vettex.

So, every vert in the zipper pull, has to have identical weight mapping to every other vert in the pull, every vert in any single zipper tooth has toexactly match every other vert in that tooth, and you do tyhis for every single tooth in the zipper,

it's tedious, time consuming and fiddly.

It's like weight mapping say, a nipple ring, the whole ring uses the weight mapping of the center point of the nipple, rather than a spread of similar weight maps that you'd use with the nipple itself or clothes over it, so the ring does not deform atall, when it moves with the body.

You can see why many peole make 'zippers' as a simple 'strip',  where the weighting for the verts on one side exactly matches the weighting for the verts on the other side, so the whole strip maintains width and does not horizontally stretch, then use texture/normal/spec maps to define the 'interlocked teeth', with a mono weighted pull at one end.

Applications like poser had a tool in the rigging options to try and do this for you, as I recall, in the 'dynamic cloth room'.

 

 

 

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer me and try to help. I will take your advice and try over. it sounds like so much work, but i will try it the way you said it. Thank you again !