Well I’m really loving 2012 so far, first big model that I have done in it.

The post tools still have lots of issues and I’m wondering if others are seeing them.

Once I have posed a couple of bones and they try and adjust the weighting on the model it can really start to mess up. I have had what looks like double transforms and just general messiness happening to the weights. Also I don’t appear to be able to undo a change in the weighting if I don’t like the results.

Has any one else been seeing these issues? I’m running SP1.

Paul Neale
PEN Productions Inc.
penproductions.ca / paulneale.com
Master Classes for Max, Mudbox and Composite
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I also found weighting with multiple bones to be very confusing. It looks like the weighting isn’t normalised or something so you can weight some verts 100% to the lower arm, then go to the upper arm and the verts on the lower arm are weighted to that too. And also to the spine. So I ended up going back and forth up and down the hierarchy trying to remove weights from every bone other than the one I wanted.

I gave up in the end. I couldn’t work it out. Max weighting is much easier than this.

Good to know it isn’t just be considering how long I have been skinning characters for.

In my opinion the pose tools in are not working. If you don’t accept the default weights, which are no good, or you are only weighting one bone, good luck getting what you want.

It is a real shame as well as this would be a great way to work on the character and just for posing for reference and showing the clients.

Paul Neale
PEN Productions Inc.
penproductions.ca / paulneale.com
Master Classes for Max, Mudbox and Composite
DotNet Tutorials

MX Driver Car and Trailer Rig On Sale!

Always thought I’m the only one not smart enough to built a complete rig in mudbox.

2 bones are the maximum that worked, everything above is pain in the ass.

I use only one bone to do my work.... Multiple bones are no fun to work with....

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/christoph-schaedl/6/558/73b

I have also seen some weighting artifacts with more complex joint setups in Mudbox, so this needs to be fixed.  However ...

If you want to create full body rigs for “final quality” posing, then build the rig in Maya, Max or Softimage and then import it into Mudbox.  This is the intended workflow and works quite well.  You’re right that Mudbox’s basic posing toolset can’t compete with the toolsets that have been developed in these animation apps over many years and through many versions, and frankly that was never the goal for Mudbox.  That would have been a real waste of development time.

The goal for joints in Mudbox is to provide a quick way to deform your model as part of the sculpting process.  This is an important distinction.  Gotta get out of the “rigging” mindset.  Rigs created in Maya or Max are generally for animation, of course, and therefore the rigger needs to ensure that the model deforms correctly in every reasonable pose that the animator attempts to depict.  So spending many hours carefully painting weights and setting up special deformers to make the rig as bullet-proof as possible is a smart investment of time—it’s a matter of either doing that work up-front or else doing a whole lot more tricky clean-up work after the animation is completed! (<-- which is necessary from time to time in production; called “shotsculpting” or “finaling")

In Mudbox, the scenario is very different.  Investing all that time up-front to do careful weight painting doesn’t make sense.  Why?  Because you’re building a skeleton for the purpose of producing a static model, not an animated one.  Consider this:  If you were tasked with designing King Kong and you wanted to show a few different designs in action poses or character poses, what’s the best use of your time?  a) spending weeks building a sophisticated muscle system that will require no reworking or reshaping in any pose, OR b) create a basic skeleton in two minutes (literally!), pose your design, and then reshape the model where needed to support the new muscle positions, wrinkling, bone protrusions, etc. that the new pose demands. 

The point is: to create a high quality pose you’re either going to have to build an amazing rig that goes far beyond joint weighting, or you’re simply going to have to reshape the model after deforming it.  And I think it’s pretty clear that for the purpose of producing a static sculpture, the “pose and reshape” approach is the better approach.  For me, I find that 98% of the time, the default weighting produced in Mudbox works very well for the purpose of getting my model into the space of the pose and ready for final shaping.  Even the best weighting in the world on even a simple joint like an elbow is not going to produce the right shape when the joint is bent—so why waste your time trying to paint perfect weights.  Just create a quick joint, bend it, and then use the sculpt tools to make it perfect!

I’m glad it’s not just me.

I’m not expecting an amazing posing system with IK and a fancy rig and to be honest the posing itself is fine for my purposes (posing a model for a static render). It’s the weighting that causes me problems. The initial weighting is a good start, but it’s not really usable around areas of complex deformation like the groin and shoulders. It’s these areas I find myself painting weights on the bone I want, going back to a load of surrounding bones and removing weighting from them all and back and forth trying to get only the part of the model I want to deform without pulling parts of the chest or opposite leg around.

And since the bone hierarchy is made based on what’s already weighted I often find that a bone will end up linked to some completely unexpected part of the model. I had one shin that ended up linked to the shoulder on one side and the thigh bone on the other as expected (with symmetry).

The reason I want a full skeleton rather than one bone chain at a time is that I like to keep my model in a binding pose and then turn on the pose to work on as I want to.

It is miles easier to import a skeleton from a 3d app. I did that before and transfered sculpt and paint detail onto a new fully skinned model and that worked pretty well. The file became enormous though for whatever reason and completely bogged my PC down.

Perhaps an option to import skeleton and weighting onto an existing model would be useful.

Good common sense tip Andrew, I did with one sculpt use Mudbox bones to deform a character and it wasn’t pretty, it worked out though :) That was the last time, I then just did as Andrew suggested use the 3D package bones tool, then import into Mudbox, makes life much easier.  I do like to go the hard route sometimes then work backwards, sometimes it works for me, other times I just add that extra gray hair :)

What I’d really want above anything else really is to be able to use the bones to quickly deform a model symmetrically.  I was really expecting this to be implemented in Mudbox 2012 SP1; but unfortunately the Pose Tools are still of no use really.  Other than posing for show.  We really need to be able to Pose & Sculpt on the fly.

Are you guys saying you have a problem with the way the tools are *designed* to work or just a problem with the way they actually work (eg. because of bugs)?

Here’s a video showing creating a human skeleton in Mudbox in under two minutes.  It’s an imperfect skeleton; it’s a basic skeleton; no one is going to use it to animate a film, but it’s a functional skeleton that will move your mesh into an action pose for further sculpting and refinement.  If you’re able to build a similar skeleton with better weighting in any other app in under two minutes, then definitely use that other app and import the skeleton into Mudbox later!

So this video shows how the tools were designed to be used.  You can see there is an emphasis on speed of setup: a single click-drag interaction defines the weighted area and the range and shape of its falloff, the joint’s position in 3D space, and the joint’s hierarchical standing.  The hierarchy is determined very simply:  if the weights of the new joint fall fully within the weights of another joint, the new joint becomes the child of the other joint.  Sometimes you have to force that situation when creating a joint to make sure the hierarchy is established—for example, when creating the clavicle joints—and then move the joint afterward to its final position.

Okay, so that’s how the tools are intended to function at this stage.  Not a rig-building toolset, just a way to deform your mesh quickly.  For a full-body rig and higher quality weighting, use the mature toolsets found in Maya, Max, or Soft.

Are you dissatisfied with this direction for the posing toolset in Mudbox?  Or are you saying the direction is fine, but the tools just don’t work (in other words, you’re encountering bugs)?

Yes that’s pretty much how I expect them to work, but I’ve never managed to get that result. I end up with the left shin bone parented to the right clavicle when trying to create them symmetrically and all sorts of issues with weights being all over the place so when I rotate the arm, a huge chunk of torso comes with it that I just can’t stop. That sort of deal.

I’ll have to try and do a copy of that exact workflow to see where the problem might lie.

One thing that might be causing this is that I use multiple meshes. That might be breaking stuff.