For my setup, I’m using the “Skinny Guy Jump” skeleton with the female MakeHuman 1.8b mesh. My character is clasping both hands under their chin with the elbows together.
Problem? In a male, there is really nothing else to deform but with a female mesh there are two breasts. These should deform as the forearms move over the chest.
Previously, I used extra bones and vertex groups to keyframe the breast deformation. This animation cycle, I would like to test the recent improvements in softbodies. I have already tried weight painting the vertex groups for left breast, but there is no deformation and the arm simply passes into the chest area.
Much more study and practice is needed, I am sure. Can some of the gurus here give some advice to this struggling animator?
I assume you are expecting the female meshes arms to deform the breasts in the same mesh.
Only planes acting as particle deflectors, can deform a softbody.
You can extrude and subdivide a planar deflector to form a crude nonplanar deflecting shape, but the more planes the deflecting shape contains, the slower the simulation will be. It does not take many planes to slow the simulation down to unusable speeds.
The deflector has to be on the same layer as the softbody it interacts with. To keep the deflector out of sight when rendering, it can be given a perfectly transparant material.
An other way to deform a softbody is to use some combination of forces.
If you want great realism, you probably have to use RVKs, since neither deflectors, nor forces displaces volume (which is an important effect of sqeesing a pair of breasts
