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Refining a character mesh in Blender - can't get it to work

DrGonzo62DrGonzo62 Posts: 381
in Blender Discussion

Hi,
I wanted to try some sculpting on a G8 character in Blender and tried to subdivide its mesh in order to have enough geometry for that.

However, once I deform the mesh by posing bones, the skin binding goes all wonky.
Any idea how to fix that other than sculpt smoothing every time I change the pose?

Thanks!

Refine A.jpg
1292 x 942 - 320K
Refine B.jpg
1215 x 970 - 133K

Comments

  • PadonePadone Posts: 4,012
    edited December 8

    Blender doesn't smooth the weightmaps when we subdivide, it's the same with multires, so you have to smooth it yourself. Be careful to do it once, affter all the subdivision is done, to avoid smoothing too much. That's probably why blender doesn't do it automatically.

    https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/wiki/Features/HD Tools

    Post edited by Padone on
  • DrGonzo62DrGonzo62 Posts: 381

    Hi Padone, thanks for the explanation.

    Unsurprisingly, this is a lot more complicated than I had expected... ;^)
    I played around with weight mapping and smoothing, but that didn't fix the issue for me.
    I rather not use a full HD character mesh as this would create a lot of overhead since I only need more topology in a few areas of the mesh.
    Guess that's not going to happen.

    Thanks for your feedback though!

    Weight Paint A.jpg
    845 x 686 - 76K
    Weight Paint B.jpg
    881 x 665 - 54K
    Weight Paint C.jpg
    817 x 649 - 47K
  • PadonePadone Posts: 4,012

    Be sure to set the smoothness when you subdivide, it seems to work fine here.

    subdivide.jpg
    531 x 198 - 41K
  • DrGonzo62DrGonzo62 Posts: 381

    Yes, I had smoothness set to 0.5 since 1.0 would give me more faceting.
    Not sure why you don't seem to have that issue when subdividing..

    However, you had mentioned the Multires modifier which I hadn't played around with before, and it looks like it might give me all I need for sculpting parts of the mesh. 8^)
     

  • PadonePadone Posts: 4,012
    edited December 10

    Sorry my fault I tested without jcms, it works fine with just weightmaps. Not sure how existing shapekeys are interpolated when we create new geometry, it may be a linear interpolation possibly causing the "flat effect". You could try a little smoothing on the affected jcms to see how it works.

    p.s. In general though creating new geometry on a rigged figure is expected to cause issues, you should be careful with that. Just reshaping aka moving vertices is fine. If you want to sculpt HD preserving the jcms then one way is to import as HD and sculpt with multires.

    jcm.jpg
    784 x 183 - 48K
    Post edited by Padone on
  • DrGonzo62DrGonzo62 Posts: 381

    Thanks for the explanation, Padone.
    I haven't tried to import a character in HD yet. Is there an advantage to this vs multiressing a standard def character in Blender?
    Just doing all the subD in Blender?

    Thanks!
     

  • PadonePadone Posts: 4,012
    edited December 10

    Well if you're not interested in the figure HD shape then I guess not, it should be the same. Be sure to disable all HD morphs before exporting though, or they will affect the base shape.

    Post edited by Padone on
  • DrGonzo62DrGonzo62 Posts: 381

    That's good to know.
    I'm currently fine with the standard character meshes, just needed more topology in some areas.
    A subD level of 2 in multires seems to give me enough detail. I had tried 3, but that made my system cry.
    Blender is really starting to grow on me. 8^)

  • DrGonzo62DrGonzo62 Posts: 381

    While on the subject...

    Does anyone know how to sculpt non-destructively when a multires modifier is active?
    Shape keys don't seem to work.

    Bummer...

  • PadonePadone Posts: 4,012

    You can't sculpt HD shapekeys, if this is what you mean, you can only sculpt the HD mesh. The multires modifier doesn't support HD shapekeys. But you can of course sculpt shapekeys on the base mesh.

    1. go to sculpt mode
    2. check "sculpt base mesh" in the multires modifier

     

  • DrGonzo62DrGonzo62 Posts: 381

    Thanks Padone, that's what I figured.
    I'm not sure what the purpose of "sculpt base mesh" is, since you can't sculpt without having the topology created by the modifier in the first place.

    Thanks for confirming though.

  • PadonePadone Posts: 4,012

    Well "sculpt base mesh" can be used for shapekeys, you select or create a shapekey then sculpt the base mesh for it. This is different from sculpting the HD mesh which will affect all the shapekeys being the base for them.

  • DrGonzo62DrGonzo62 Posts: 381

    Got it, thanks!

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