Digital Art Zone

Is it possible to save weight maps in Carrara 8.1? Maybe I’m missing something obvious, but I don’t see how to save weight maps in Carrara. I modeled and rigged one of my custom characters and want to save the weight maps. The Carrara reference guide indicates there should be a ‘Save weight maps as’ button in the weight painting pane. But I don’t have that button.

Any ideas?

nah, asked on old forum already, only can for Daz/Poser figures, your own rigging saving the whole figure rigged the only way, detaching skeleton you are back to square one.
sucks
but not much one can do, is the same in most programs I gather, Messiah being an exception, I have it but never learnt to use it but you CAN detach induvidual bones and add bones apparently without losing existing rigging.

As Wendy mentioned, saving the weight maps only works for Poser style figures.

You can save the weight maps within the scene, so as long as you don’t detach the skeleton from the mesh, you’re A-okay. What this means is, if you’re happy with the rig and weight map, save the character to the browser and then load it into whatever scene you need and the weights maps will be preserved.

I should add that you might want to save them as an animation group, as then you’ll get an NLA track to make/use NLA clips.

wendy♥catz - 20 August 2012 08:47 PM

nah, asked on old forum already, only can for Daz/Poser figures, your own rigging saving the whole figure rigged the only way, detaching skeleton you are back to square one.
sucks
but not much one can do, is the same in most programs I gather, Messiah being an exception, I have it but never learnt to use it but you CAN detach induvidual bones and add bones apparently without losing existing rigging.

Thanks Wendy. I had a feeling it was only for Daz/Poser figured. Having to go back to square one really sucks. When trying to refine my rigs I have to detach the skeleton at times. It sucks to have to do back to square one every time. Major flaw in the Carrara rigging workflow. To save time, I’m going to have to start using another tool. I’ll take a quick look at Messiah.

I know I can save and reload weights in Maya (I have a perpetual educational licence for Maya 2010; purchased when attending college a few years ago; don’t want to pay what it costs for current version). And I think Lightwave also supports it (recently purchased upgrade to version 11; least costly path for me to higher end 3D app with commercial licence).

Just have to decide on which one to use as my primary rigging tool. I will probably try the process in each and then decide.

evilproducer - 20 August 2012 09:05 PM

As Wendy mentioned, saving the weight maps only works for Poser style figures.

You can save the weight maps within the scene, so as long as you don’t detach the skeleton from the mesh, you’re A-okay. What this means is, if you’re happy with the rig and weight map, save the character to the browser and then load it into whatever scene you need and the weights maps will be preserved.

I should add that you might want to save them as an animation group, as then you’ll get an NLA track to make/use NLA clips.

Thanks for your reply evilproducer. I’m familiar with the implications of saving a scene and using the browser for saving characters, props, etc. And I almost always use NLA tracks/clips when animating.

It appears what I want to do is not supported with custom characters. So, if I don’t want to keep starting over when refining a rig/skeleton, I should use another tool.

I grabbed Messiah when they had the $40 promo considerably dearer now I believe poss 10x!
must learn to use it oneday, not the most intuitive interface but autorig apparently pretty good, some iClone users love it.
problem it costs to join the setup tab forum to learn to use it and I am too tight!

wendy♥catz - 20 August 2012 11:48 PM

I grabbed Messiah when they had the $40 promo considerably dearer now I believe poss 10x!
must learn to use it oneday, not the most intuitive interface but autorig apparently pretty good, some iClone users love it.
problem it costs to join the setup tab forum to learn to use it and I am too tight!

You have to buy the software, and pay to join the forum?!?

CyBoRgTy_ - 20 August 2012 09:47 PM

evilproducer - 20 August 2012 09:05 PM

As Wendy mentioned, saving the weight maps only works for Poser style figures.

You can save the weight maps within the scene, so as long as you don’t detach the skeleton from the mesh, you’re A-okay. What this means is, if you’re happy with the rig and weight map, save the character to the browser and then load it into whatever scene you need and the weights maps will be preserved.

I should add that you might want to save them as an animation group, as then you’ll get an NLA track to make/use NLA clips.

Thanks for your reply evilproducer. I’m familiar with the implications of saving a scene and using the browser for saving characters, props, etc. And I almost always use NLA tracks/clips when animating.

It appears what I want to do is not supported with custom characters. So, if I don’t want to keep starting over when refining a rig/skeleton, I should use another tool.

Sorry I couldn’t be much help. It’s kind of a PITA not to be able to save your own weight maps and quite frankly, I’m not sure why you can’t. I mean, if you can do it for a DAZ/Poser figure, how hard would it be to implement for a Carrara built mesh and rig? I can’t speak for anybody else, but I’ve never felt the need to weight paint a DAZ/Poser figure in Carrara.

Sorry if I my answer covered ground you’re already familiar with. I figured a little extra information would be good because I don’t know the skill set of the person asking the question. This way, if the person asking is familiar with all or parts of the response, somebody else perusing the topic, or with a similar issue might not be.

I have actually tried without success to weightpaint the lower jaw of a Daz/Poser figure with a wide open mouth to use the lower jaw bone for boned animation in iClone which does not support vertex morphs.
Had it worked I could have saved that map for other figures.
(the vertices just spiked wildly)
likewise the eyelids on the eyes.
so yes, there COULD be a use for it, but WOULD be more usefull to be able to save Carrara rigged weightpainting!

I’ve often wondered what purpose it would serve to save a Poser-type figure’s weight-map.  The only way you can get at the rigging is to convert it to Carrara native, then you can’t load the saved map anyway.

Maybe someone can make sense of this?