Cannot Remove Vertices from Vertex Group

i’m dealing with some bone anomalies (i think), wherein rotating a bone will cause its body part to shrink while rotating. i have found that this may occur when multiple bones are incorrectly affecting a vertex group.

so i went about trying to trim out the waste. i selected a bone group to move the lower lip, selected the vertices. ALL the vertices in the mesh are in that group. okay, so i deselected the vertices i wanted to leave in the group, leaving everything else selected, but when i went to REMOVE those vertices from that group… the ‘assign’ and ‘remove’ buttons were greyed out.

NOW what?

(also, is there a better way to do this? i could just splodge a huge 100% strength subtraction on the whole mesh, i guess? after i deselect the verts/weights i want to keep.)

thanks a bunch!

Try the normalize tool in the toolbar in weight paint mode

i think it is a lot easier to put your armature in pose, select your mesh and then control tab to weight paint mode. Set your options in weight paint to show active zero weights. On your selected bone when they are black, they are zero weights. While keeping the bone selected then hit your clean set at zero and it will eliminate your zero weights for that bone. Wiggle the bone and repeat as needed. Select the next bone. Repeat.

Were you changing modes? Don’t know if it’s a bug or Blender thinking it’s smarter than you, but Blender changes the active weight group on some mode switches. So you select your weight group in one mode, change modes to select the vertices, and it’s unselected your weight group, so the verts are no longer in the active group, so you can’t unassign them.

I try to do all my weight stuff, assign or remove, from weight paint mode, switching out of vertex mode to click bones to directly select vertex groups, rather than getting them on the list. At least that way, you know what you have selected. It is kind of a pain in the ass because edit mode has such better selection tools-- why does weight paint need different code than edit mode for vertex selection? I dunno.

There’s nothing wrong with the way you’re doing it, although there might be better ways depending on your mesh and what you’re doing. Big blanket group removals like this aren’t normally necessary, unless it’s something where you’re just going to delete the entire group from the object.

oh, i am a doof!

the vertex group was LOCKED! that’s why i could select/deselect but not assign/remove. gah!

bandages, i’m with you. like, why the dip doesnt ctrl-l (select linked) work AT ALL in weight paint mode?? or selecting by material? that would be real handy when i want the lower teeth to all move with the jaw…!

thanks, guys!