I’ve been banging my head trying to figure this out (see screenshot) - specifically why the clothes on my figure keep ‘breaking through’ the body when I pose the arm closer to the body. In general the MeshDeform seems to work fine, except in cases like this. Also for reference, attached is a stripped-down version of the current .blend file I’m using…
What I’ve done so far: I haven’t found anything specific enough about this situation either on Google or on the board here. Now I’ve been using DanPro’s (excellent) videos as reference material, and viewed all of them at least once (the ones specific to weighting - Part 1 7D and 7E at least twice). Unfortunately they don’t cover weighting for external deformation cages like I’m using on the clothes…
I’ve also used ‘normalized’ weights per Danpro’s instructions (on both body and on the deformation cage for the dress), but it doesn’t seem to help…
I’ve noticed that when I swing the arm inwards to the body (which in turn creates the issue in the screenshot) I can see the dress deform- however I would think that the only thing that would cause this actual deformation on the dress would be coming from the arm bone (DEF-upper_arm.L and DEF-upper_arm.L.001), however I’ve verified several times that these bones have no direct influence on the area at the side of the body where the dress is deforming.
The only other thing I can think of is that because the external deformation cage is being compressed in this area (with the arm being moved closer to the body) that it’s somehow causing this. However I also know that this logic is flawed as it doesn’t explain the deformation occurring on the shoulder top. I realize that is being influenced by both the DEF-shoulder.L and DEF-upper_arm.L bones, but weight painting/normalizing doesn’t seem to alleviate this.
I’m at a loss right now as to what’s causing this - I was hoping another pair of eyes might be able to spot whatever stupid mistake/oversight I’m making…
Hmm… that was fast… I can’t seem to find a ‘surface deform’ modifier available either to the clothes or to the associated deformation cage. Do I need to have something enabled to be able to select it?
Oh- btw I’m running Blender 2.78 - is it only on 2.79?
Edit: Just checked the release notes… yes it looks like Surface Deform is new for 2.79 (correct me if I’m wrong)…
I’d like to resist moving up to 2.79 while in the middle of a project… unless I get several members telling me ‘this IS the way to go’, I’d rather stay with 2.78 until I finish this project. In which case, can someone else suggest any alternatives, please?
You need to adjust the weight on your mesh deform cage. Here it is in solid draw all edges. As you can see the vertices are pulled in because there is not enough weight on the spine. The dress will follow.
Thanks! I managed to get the area on the side of the dress cleaned up and it looks much better than before (although I had to weigh the spine bone fairly heavily in order to do so).
Question on the sleeve - After I finished cleaning up the area you had outlined above, I did a Clean and Normalize All, then checked the sleeve by going into edit mode and selecting a couple of verticies - it looks like that the sleeve is divided into two ‘weight sections’, one for each of the bones that the sleeve covers. I’ve tried adjusting the weights on the sleeve to try to fix where the arm was breaking through the sleeve, but wasn’t able to affect it much- if at all. The screenshot below (taken from the front) shows one of the vertexes in the area of the ‘tear’ … I guess I’m having trouble understanding what’s going on with the sleeve- the weights look like they should work, or am I overlooking something else?
I junked the Mesh Deform modifier and the deformation cage - in fact I junked the dress entirely. I had remembered in the later Danpro tutorials he had discussed using clothing ‘extruded’ from the figure as the resulting mesh would respond better to any deformations as it would match that of the figure’s body mesh. So that’s what I did- I created a new dress using the technique he outlined.
The resulting mesh was much easier to work with, and responded better to weighting- the old dress was just one I had created independently, so of course it’s mesh didn’t match the body much at all.
I have a couple more articles of clothing that use the Mesh Deform modifier, so I plan on also converting them over with the same technique.
