Bad deformation in shoulder

Artwork Works in Progress
1

I’m trying to make a model for 3D printing for a custom gaming miniature, and thanks to my lack of skill, it’s not going well.

I made a model in MakeHuman and then exported it to Blender using the “basic” rig. Posing it in Blender works, but the joints aren’t moving properly, as you can see in the attached image. (I tried to attach the .blend file, but I got an error message stating that the “upload failed”)

Being a noob, I really don’t know what to do about this . . . I’m even considering ignoring it since it’ll be covered by clothing in the end.

Attachments

ShoulderProblem.png960×540 158 KB

2

part 1 Weight painting

Part 2 Shoulder is complex joint, for simple stuff you can represent it with a single bone joint, however for it’s true motion you need a pivot point and a offset bone (the shoulder’s joint is not in line with it’s center)

3

in addition to what BPR said, shoulders never deform properly past a certain rotation, and the best way to deal with it is ‘corrective shape keys’ add-on.

4
5

I wonder if you could use overlapping bones, that rotate based on the main shoulder bone, but less,

So these “other bones” deform the surface less progressivly the closer you get to the armpit,

Also, I think an accurate collorbone goes a long way to fixing improper deformation at extreme angles, and setting up ik perfectly.

6

If you still have the Makehuman version you could try to export again with another rig. The basic rig is simply that: a very basic rig. If you set the rig to none in MH and export as MHX file you will get a much more advanced rig. Use the “n” panel in the 3D view after you selected the rig to switch between FK and IK.

This more advanced rig may help. But if you look at the underlying geometry you will find, that the new geometry at the shoulder is somewhat limited, if you compare it to the geometry of the Learning Mesh Topology Collection from CG Cookie for example. The older meshes of former versions deformed better at the shoulder joins, imo. Perhaps you can refine some parts of the topology to get better deformations?

And you can always turn on display as wire for your mesh, to see what’s going on with the mesh when it is deformed by the armature.

7

Thanks for your replies. I found the inverse kinematics stuff, and I puzzled out enough to make an improvement. It still isn’t perfect, and I’d like to learn more eventually, but I think this will work for under the clothing of a 28mm miniature figure.

shoulderimprovement.png960×540 244 KB