Reply To: Help Needed Troubleshooting Weight Painting Issues
Hey Gary,
Man I hate it when the auto weights fail. But there is a workaround. Just try it one bone at a time, or do them in sections (like all the legs, all the hand bones etc).
When you are in weight paint mode (WP) on the mesh, just select the bone you want to auto weight, then look in the Weights menu.
Weights > Assign Automatic From Bones
If you can’t select bones while in WP, check out this short video
https://cgcookie.com/lesson/lock-object-mode
As for the other issues – I think you have made the rookie mistake of applying you subsurf modifier – eek. Don’t worry we have all done that.
That actually makes your job 4 times harder because it makes the extra verts real – and then you have extra data that you have to paint. You can just leave this modifier on the mesh but make sure it is after the armature modifier, as it will give you smoother results and then the armature modifier doesn’t have to calculate these extra verts everytime you mode the character. (this will speed up playback when animating)
The ‘smearing’ effect is most likely caused by those verts having 0 weights to any bone. So they stick in place when you move the armature.
If they partially move, they might have a random weight from an unrelated bone. So they might be weighted to the hand (or whatever) but then when you were brushing the toes, for example, you accidentally brushed off the toe and painted those guys.
You can enable the deformed view in the mesh’s edit mode by checking on the last 2 items in the armature modifier
See the camera, screen, edit mode, and cage buttons? make sure the last 2 are on. Then you can see the transformation in edit mode. Then try selecting the offending verts and checking what vertex groups they are applied to.
That vert belongs to ‘Group.003’ at 1.00 (or 100%)
Pro Tip: If that vert group isn’t in the ‘Deform’ tab, it means there is no bone in the armature that matches that name, or the bone is not set to deform.
Hope that helps. Let me know if you are still stuck.