In order to eliminate display issues when animating, skin weights are a great way to make sure that one joint doesn’t influence another. An example of this is when you lift the leg, parts of the waist don’t lift up as well. To do this, we can use a variety of methods which involve painting weights onto different limbs. In addition to save time we only have to apply to one side of the body (left leg and left arm for example) and then mirror them later on.
Below is screenshots of how my paint weights were applied.
Leg
Applying weights to the leg stops any visual issues when bending or moving forwards and backwards. This was especially helpful to me as for a while when the leg was bent, it looked very unnatural and glitchy but painting the weights in the correct position eliminated this issue. This part of painting also included the foot which helps us bend the foot up and down naturally.
Arms
The next part I did was the arms. This was where I had most of my issues for a while due to the characters design which made it a little more difficult to get them right. Due to the characters sleeve, I had to paint inside the mesh which meant hiding the arms so I could access it. However after doing this and refining the outer parts, I was able to get a fully functioning arm that moved naturally.
In addition to the arm, this section also included the fingers which were individually painted in so when I move the individual joints, the fingers move realistically.
Body/Head
Finally the last part of the painting was the body and head. This included the spine sections as well as the neck and head. The head needed to be full of influence so it would be able to move and rotate without stretching which is a common issue before painting. Further more the spine needs to be done so the body can bend naturally.
One issue I had was the head was causing me problems when the eyes where bind to it. This was an ongoing issue that was easily fixable, however it seemed to occur a lot.
Final Points
One thing that I needed to keep a track of was locking any paint tabs that did not relate to the current part being painted. Sometimes I would forget this and I would accidentally paint part of the leg for example when I was focusing on the arm. This meant that when I raised the arm, part of the leg would come with it. Fixing this isn’t an issue but it is easy to miss some parts and is also time consuming going through each tab to find whats effecting it.
