Aquila Kytori

Correction to my earlier post : It should have been Z axis is Forwards and Y axis is Up .

The reason the animation importer was throwing up that error was because the dragon skeleton had two bones that should not have been there. Bone and Bone.001. Deleting those two bones will enable you to import an animation without an error. Uploading an animation which rotates the mShoulderLeft bone of the dragon : Here is a video that explains how to animate the model in the standing up position while still having the base model/armature using Y up and Z forwards. Enable the subtitles/captions for an explanation for how this works.

When uploading the dragon armature as an Animation the SL animation importer throws up the error "Unable to read animation file, Incorrect root joint name, use "hip". A very simple Stick_man model rigged using the same (I hope it is the same) "bento" rig and animated to move the left leg forwards and the right arm back, imports without an error. Note that the armature/model had to be rotated so that Y axis is Forwards and Z axis is Up otherwise the limbs were rotated incorrectly ( and Scale set to 39.3701 meters to inches. I am not sure yet how important this scale setting is. its just something I read in an earlier thread). If I understand correctly something Optimo mentioned in an earlier thread; the .bvh (or was it the SL importer ?) looks for a bone named hip to use as root but if it doesn't find that it will accept mpelvis instead. I checked and the dragon does have the mpelvis bone. (I also tried renaming the mPelvis to hip but same error). Does anyone have any ideas what what could be causing this error ?

Wings are skinned :

YAY! No more Spikes 1: After watching one of Medue's videos I again repositioned and shortened by quite alot many of the head bones. 2: I Isolated the head and removed all vertex groups from this part of the mesh. 3: Isolated teeth and tongue for weighting separately later on. 4: Isolated the lower part or the head which is suppose to move with the mFaceJaw bone. (see first image below) 5: With only the relevant bones selected and in the vertex select, (masking mode) I assigned Automatic Weights from Bones to the the lower part of the head. 6: Repeated step 5 for the upper part of the head, and for the tongue. 7: The Upper and lower teeth were each selected separately and assigned weights of 1.00 to the relevant vertex group. 8: Checked for main bone rotations and smoothed out where necessary by hand painting the weights. Eyes, skin between wing bones and more smoothing to do.......... Notes on weighting, Assigning Automatic Weight from Bones to the lower jaw area, with the rest of the model masked out and only the relevant bones visible : Result is no "leaking of weights to other parts of the head : The result of not Isolating (masking out) the rest of the head and bones is shown below. With MfaceLipLowercenter selected note how the front part of the gums and teeth are also weighted.

1: Rotate both rig and model so that it was better aligned along the X axis: Done. 2: Position both rig and model central to Blender global X axis: Done. 3: Reposition bones so the the left side match better the bones on the right side: Done. 4: Reposition all the bones in the head to better fit the model: Done. 5: Transplant tail from earlier mesh to complete model: Done 6: One by one select all bones from mHead down to mTail6, including "wings" (arms and hand bones) bones and re-assign weights using Assign Automatic From Bones. Rotate each to check deformation and weight paint where necessary: Done. 7: Check weights of head bones and paint if necessary. Check deformations when rotating: FAIL ! OMG ! That head ...........I started correcting weights then noticed among other things that almost all of the head is weighted heavily to mFaceRoot. Checked with the Avatar head weights and this just seemed wrong. see images below. Vertices weighted to the mFaceRoot vertex group of the Dragon : Notice that some of the teath are incorrectly weighted but that is a minor issue. Compared to vertices weighted to mFaceRoot of an Avatar : I tried removing the MFace Root vertex group from the head vertices intending to re-paint........ but that caused lots of other issues.............. My lack of understanding of rigging is becoming very frustrating at the moment. The only thing I can think of is to select all the vertices of the head and Remove them from all groups. Then start weighting the bones one by one again.......... but that will have to wait untill tomorrow.

Perhaps you will find the answer in this earlier thread : https://community.secondlife.com/forums/topic/451310-blender-282-not-exporting-texture/?tab=comments#comment-2264378 Unless you have a very good reason for uploading the texture along with the mesh it is usually better to upload the texture separately and then apply it to the model once it it rezzed inworld just like you would add a texture to a SL prim cube. If you are only testing how the texture will look on your model inworld there is the possibility to use the Local option which loads up your texture directly from your PC instead of your SL inventory. This will saves you paying the L$10 for each texture upload while still in the testing phase and has the advantage that it will automatically update every time you save your texture. The disadvantage is that only you can see the texture inworld. SL Wiki Local textures : http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Rolig_Loon/Local_Textures

Check your dm's

I will check it out tomorrow

And guess what ? .......... I am not seeing what you are seeing! 😄 What I have in the rightwing.blend file you linked to is very close to what you are showing in your image but as far as I can judge that part of the "sticking" mesh is made up of 3 vertices but in your screenshot it looks to be only two vertices. So I am guessing we are not working with exactly the same mesh. Left is from your image, left is from the rightwing.blend file : It would be helpfull if you could change your Zero Weights option from Active to None then what is black in your image would be blue, and also enable Show Wire in the Viewport Overlays panel. See image below :

But you do know why parts of the mesh / vertices are "Sticking in place" !!! You just wont admit it to yourself. let me repeat this one last time ........... If parts / vertices are "sticking in place" it is because the vertices are incorrectly weighted. Look at the gif below. I have rotated the mElbowRight bone a little. Each time one of those "sticking in place" vertices is selected notice that each and everyone of them are weighted to the wrong vertex groups. Two of them are not weighted to any vertex group at all. So it is normal that they stick in place. Note that if you hold down the Ctrl key while selecting the vertices, only that vertex is selected. Holding down the Shift key while selecting will add that vertex to the vertices already selected. If we zoom in on the vertex that was the first to be selected in the gif above we see that it is a vertex that is part of the thumb but is is weighted to three vertex groups that have nothing to do with the thumb. In the image below delete these three vertex groups from this vertex by hitting the little X buttons. Now it does not belong to any vertex groups. This vertex should belong to the mHandThumb3Right and a little to mHandThumb2Right. After a little painting of this and the other vertices we get for the mHandThumb3Right : And for mHandThumb2Right : Edited to add: It should be noted that I also tried applying Assign Automatic Weights from Bones to the wing mesh and it did correct those "sticking in place" vertices. I did this with only the right wing mesh and the right wing bones mesh visible and selected. Thats to say the rest of the bones and mesh hidden. IF you are going to do this I would strongly recommend that you save your file before attempting it . 🙂

When in Weight paint mode if you enable Vertex selection and then hold down the Shift key and select a vertex you can see which vertex groups and weights it is assigned to. Hold down the Shft key to select the next vertex. It is always the last vertex selected that it is shown in the Item > Vertex Weights panel.

If you had done that you would have seen that many vertices are incorrectly weighted. For example the area around mHandThumb3Right. Look at the screenshot below. Why is this vertex weighted to the mPelvis and mShoulderRight when it should be weighted to mHandThumb3Right and mHandThumb2Right ? You need to delete mPelvis and mShoulderRight from this vertex and then paint it so that it is weighted only to mHandThumb3Right and mHandThumb2Right. Lets look at the next bone...... the selected vertex is weighted to the correct vertex group but ......... this one isn't ! : This is approximately how this part of the mesh should look and the same vertex weighted correctly : What you need to do is starting at the extremities of the wing check how the mesh deforms when rotating the appropriate bone and if something looks wrong then fix. I found that sometimes it helps to have the Auto Normalize option enabled and sometimes not. the same with the Vertex selection in weight paint mode. See screenshot below for these two options : I also found that if it seems that the weight painting isn't working any more then enable or disable one or both of these two options. I think it is usually best to paint with a very low Strength value for the brush. Its just like the tail you have to do alot of painting by hand. It will be good practice for you. If you find weight painting differ cult it is because you have not spent enough time learning from Youtube videos and then putting what you have learnt into practice. So simply put, If parts of the mesh deforms badly when rotating the bones it is because one or more of the vertices in that area is badly weighted ! Its a difficult model to start weight painting on but you have been told that before. Just do a little, one bone at a time. The more you do the easier it will get, and you have alot to do so...........

It has to be that those vertices are weighted incorrectly. In Edit mode select one of those vertices and check which vertex groups they belong to. If you still can't sort it out you will have to share that part of the model like you did the tail yesterday.

No it is wrong long before you tried to join ! 🙁 In the second screenshot of my previous post it says "Select the lower 8 triangles and covert to quads" Eight ! 8 is not the same as 6. When I tried selecting only 6 of the 8 lower triangles I got the same result as shown in your image. This is the 6 triangles you had selected : and this is the 8 tris you should have had selected before converting to quads :

@VirtualKitten Often when there are too many edges joining at a single vertex it is not possible to convert the triangles to quads. In that case you have to only select the triangles that will convert to quads and then connect across the other tris with the Connect Vertex Path tool, ( J key ). (or other times with the Knife tool ). But first there is an unwanted vertex in this part of the tail, (a vertex in the middle of an edge). Select this vertex and use the Dissolve tool. X to open the Delete menu, and choose the Dissolve vertices option : Next select the lower 8 triangles and convert them to quads. Add a loop cut to the newly formed quads : Select the two vertices at the end of the loop cut : Use the J key to connect them : Et voila :

You can scale the edge loop to zero along one of the axis , for example S Y 0 validate. Then in side view you will probably need to rotate it a little. Another method could be : when you add the new edge loop make this edge loop parallel with one of the existing edge loops to the right or left of it. Ctrl R to add new edge loop. LMB to validate. You will notice one of the edges connected to an one of the existing edge loops turn yellow, and the cursor change to two little arrows. pressing the E key will make the new loop parallel to one edge. if this is not the correct edge then after pressing the E key press the F key to make it parallel to the other edge (Loop).

I don't think you will ever get beautiful curves when bending the tail simply because there is not enough bones in such a long tail. Anyways I had a go at weighting the bones of your tail. First I tried to clean up the geometry a bit, and then removed some of the loop cuts you had added around mTail1 and mTail 2. I added a few loops around the ends of some of the other bones. You can download a copy of the modified tail here : https://pasteall.org/blend/f85b4a14b42b4b41b583675199b8277d When weight painting I went for the fill in the majority of the bone red and the part that joins to the next bone green aproach. Then bending each bone to test and while bent adding or removing weights where there was too much deformation using a brush with very low strength values. The result is far from perfect but perhaps Ok if you don't try rotating the bones too much. I don't think you would need to rotate the bones alot when animating. For some reason you had the vertices of mTail6, weighted partially to the mgroin vertex group ? Something else I noticed ......... the skeleton and the mesh are rotated a little around the Z axis : I don't know if that will cause you problems later on ? Perhaps @Quarrel Kukulcan could comment on this ?

Your in too deep now to worry about warnings like that. Just do it and see what happens. My guess is it will be Ok. Just select the area you want to add the loop cut and convert the triangles to quads : Add the loop cut. If it is incomplete use the the method from yesterday : Steps 4 and 5 in the screenshots below.

I just tried setting automatic weights to the tongue. 1: In Edit mode, Face select mode....... Select the part of the mesh you want to re-do the automatic weights. 1b: If the weights assigned to the vertices are really messed up probably best to use the Remove from All Groups option for this selected part of the mesh. 2: Invert the selection with Ctrl + I 3: H key to hide selection. 4: Object mode.......... Select the bones then Shift select the mesh. Next switch to Weight paint mode. 2: Select only the bone(s) you want to use to re-asign automatically the weights to the mesh. In this case I selected the two tongue bones. 4: Enable the Vertex Selection hide / (mask out) the part of the mesh that was hidden in Edit mode. 5: Use the A key to select All the visible geometry.H 6: Use the keyboard short-cut keys Shft + H to hide all the other bones. So now you should only have visible the part of the mesh and the relevent bones. 7: Open the Weights menu and choose the Assign Automatic from Bones option. The first screen shot shows the tongue after I have Removed All Vertex Groups. And after Assigning Automatic weights from Bones. The next screenshot is showing what not to do. This is the result of Assigning Automatic Weights from bones without first hiding all the irreverent bones : Only a very small part of the mesh is weighted at 100%. In Edit mode...... with a single vertex selected, we can see that this vertex is only weighted at 0.119 to the mFaceTonguebase and not even weighted to any of the surrounding bones. This is not good. But when we look at the same vertex after hiding irrelevant bones and then Assign Automatic Weights from Bones, it has a weight of 0.989 to the mFaceTonguebase. Which I think is OK. All this may look complicated when written down like this but none of this is new to you. We have done all the steps before. Perhaps @Quarrel Kukulcan can say if this is the correct method to re-assign Automatic Weights from Bones when trying to re-weight only part of a mesh ?

What ! ! ! I misread, I had thought the dragon done. From the tip of its tail to mFaceTongueTip. So really it is only the tongue ? lol Unless it was you that created the dragon model I think it would be best if you didn't share it in a public forum. My guess would be you now need to go through each vertex group in weight paint mode and if you see some obvious errors like areas of the model weighted to the wrong vertex group then using the Mix brush set to a Weight of 0.000 with a strength of say 0.30 or so, AND the Auto Normalize option checked, carefully subtract that vertex group from that area of the skin. Stopping to check how the area is effected when rotating the appropriate bone(s) Keep at it and you will get it done eventually. Later when you have done a bit more correcting and still feel you need some help you can send me the .blend in a private message.

OMG ! Its done 🙂 Congratulations, not an easy project for someone who has never attempted it before. I think we both learnt together on this one. 😀

How can you paint with a Subtract brush with a weight of 0.00 ! ! ! That means you are subtracting nothing ! Instead of switching all the time between the Add and Subtract brushes set your brush to Mix and leave it at Mix and paint with the Weight at 1.000 or 0.000 and nothing in between. When using the Mix brush with a weight of 1.000 means you are adding weight, ( equivalent to the Strength value.) Mix brush Adding weight : When using the Mix brush with a weight of 0.000 means you are subtracting weight, (equivalent to the Strength value.) Mix brush Subtracting weight :

You may find that you need to weight the vertices at the very back of the tongue a little to the same vertex groups as the back of the mouth.