Why is my rigged mesh stretched when worn?

[Rick Nightingale]

Edit: Solved by updating Avastar. Thanks for the help folks.

I'm (very!) new to making rigged mesh although fairly familiar with Blender otherwise.

I got this free Open Mer Tail and am trying to modify it in Blender and reupload it. No matter what I try (even uploading it completely unmodified) the tail always stretches out lengthwise, a lot, when I attach it. It looks fine if just rezzed on the ground but when worn it looks like it starts at my knees instead of my hips and is several metres longer and thinner than it should be.

I don't want to post a direct link to the blend file because it's not mine, but if someone would be kind enough to get the free OMT on the MP with the link to the blend file in a NC and look at it please...

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/OpenMerTail-Fullperm-Bento-Mermaid-Tail/21708550

I have tried every setting* in Blender (I updated to the latest a few days ago) and the SL mesh importer (Firestorm) but nothing makes any difference. Some settings break the rigging completely and it goes floppy, and I figured out that it needed rotating, but nothing helps the stretching issue. I've asked the creator but had no answer (probably busy; no worries) and googled the issue in general without any results. I even tried reverting to Blender v2.79 with Avastar (because that's the latest Avastar I have) and exporting with that; no difference.

*Edit: clearly I've missed one though, lol

Edited August 20, 2021 by Rick Daylight
solved

[Janet Voxel]

3 hours ago, Rick Daylight said:

I'm (very!) new to making rigged mesh although fairly familiar with Blender otherwise.

I got this free Open Mer Tail and am trying to modify it in Blender and reupload it. No matter what I try (even uploading it completely unmodified) the tail always stretches out lengthwise, a lot, when I attach it. It looks fine if just rezzed on the ground but when worn it looks like it starts at my knees instead of my hips and is several metres longer and thinner than it should be.

I don't want to post a direct link to the blend file because it's not mine, but if someone would be kind enough to get the free OMT on the MP with the link to the blend file in a NC and look at it please...

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/OpenMerTail-Fullperm-Bento-Mermaid-Tail/21708550

I have tried every setting* in Blender (I updated to the latest a few days ago) and the SL mesh importer (Firestorm) but nothing makes any difference. Some settings break the rigging completely and it goes floppy, and I figured out that it needed rotating, but nothing helps the stretching issue. I've asked the creator but had no answer (probably busy; no worries) and googled the issue in general without any results. I even tried reverting to Blender v2.79 with Avastar (because that's the latest Avastar I have) and exporting with that; no difference.

*Edit: clearly I've missed one though, lol

Pictures would probably be helpful here. From what you're saying it sounds like you're binding it to the leg bones and not the tail bone. From the picture of the armature on the MP page it looks like the armature is for the tail bone and it's already rigged. You should revert back to the original .DAE and see if the tailbone( or whatever bones actually have weights) has weights on it, then copy them and transfer them to your rig.

[Rick Nightingale]

The beta grid finally let me back in. Always seems to be a problem gettng in there since the cloud. Anyway...

I've tried exporting the original .blend file I downloaded from the link in the NC, unmodified. It does the stretching on that too. I have a lot of learning to do I think. Unrigged mesh is easy, lol.

Picture: Left is the tail from the MP (not uploaded by me). Centre is my uploaded tail rezzed (as it should look). Right is my uploaded tail attached.

If it helps, it does work with the Bento tail animations for it, so it's basically working, sort of, but it's still very stretched out.

 

 

[Janet Voxel]

Yeah, so just transfer the weights from the original tail to your modified tail. From there, weight paint it.

 

[Rick Nightingale]

Thank you, I'll watch those (I was just about to go looking for videos!).

I don't think I'm making it clear though that just loading the original, unmodified .blend file into Blender, immediately exporting as .dae and importing to SL has the stretching problem. I haven't got as far as trying to change anything yet. I'm trying to get it working as-is as a known starting point, before I start breaking it myself.

[Janet Voxel]

No, you did. You seem to be having problems uploading the mesh. I said in the beginning, if you don’t post pictures of what you’re doing no one can help you, because there’s a lot of buttons and no way to know what you ticked or didn’t tick.

You also said you didn’t know how to rig, so I tried to help you with that instead. Since you don’t know what version of blender the creator used, it’s possible loading the mesh into 2.93, the weights got borked. 
 

Don’t really know, because we no can see.

[Xed Saunders]

maybe not appropriate to your case but i solved a similar issue checking the box "include joint positions" when upload the mesh

[Rick Nightingale]

Thanks Xed, I had been doing that and it got me part way.

It's working now, anyway. The creator answered and told me one key point: It was done with Avastar. Still wouldn't work right for me though (as I said in my OP I tried that) until I paid to update to Avaster 2.79 and updated the model for that, even though it was done in Av. v2.5-1 which was what I had installed originally! Then it just worked, without fiddling with settings.