Hello,
I am currently struggling with leather jacket rigging, model itself is rather low poly…
I tried to use cage with “Mesh Deform” to deal with small details like rivets and zippers (that are right now separate objects), but results are not precise, even when more object has vertexes at the exactly same places. Also, any higher value than 7 when binding is shutting Blender down.
Is there any sure way to rig these small details so they would not slide and go through main mesh? I had some success with Shrinkwrap/Copy Transform constraints, but there is always something janky, especially when “Mesh Deform” is present.
It can be finicky, but I’ve had good luck with using it to attach smaller details like buttons and zippers.
If you want to keep using Mesh Deform, which is fine, more information would be helpful, like pictures, or a link to the file. Are you using the Mesh Deform cage on both the Jacket and the finer details, or is the jacket rigged, and then the details are controlled with the Mesh Deform?
If you use a mesh deform, use a single mesh deformer and use it to deform all elements, rather than mixing animation techniques. That is, don’t armature deform your jacket, then build a mesh deformer that tries to match your leather jacket to deform the zipper; just build a sufficient cage, and use it to deform both the jacket and the zipper. If two vertices are in the same place, and are being deformed with the same settings by the same mesh deformer, they will remain in the same place.
You shouldn’t have to mess with precision too much for this kind of use; default bind precision should be fine. The only place I would have problems with default precision are like at the places between fingers on a hand.
For what it’s worth, I used the Mesh Deform method in my latest project’s jacket and shoes.
It’s arguably the only/most reliable way to get things to “deform as a whole”. Here are a few things I’ve learnt via mistakes:
the Deforming mesh’s topology needs to somewhat match what’s inside, and it MUST enclose everything - this might be a problem in the armpit areas
if you’ve bound everything, only to realize the deforming mesh needs updating, just add a loop cut or something to change the number of vertices, and you’ll know which meshes require re-binding
Thank you for all the suggestions, I will try to elaborate further.
First thing - yes, all meshes have Loc/Rot/Scale resetted and cage encloses them fully.
My goal is to have fully tweakable object, so basic deformation is made with
cage mesh (controlled with armature) that is controlling final meshes with “Mesh Deform”. But there are some parts (like zipper sliders) that I need to stick to jacket surface point and manualy animate above everything.
pose the armature
tweak overall shape with shapekey on cage mesh
animate detail (preferably again with armature)
Something like that is partially possible with lattice included in armature rig, but there the lattice is not the overall deformer of final object.
I am not sure that I can describe it properly, I will try to create some example blend.
Surface Deform works surprisingly well, I’ll see how it will perform on more complex model.
Attaching zipper slider was more complex, maybe there is easier setup.
Buckle and zipper are not commanded by cage, so no cage tweaking, but I can animate them separately by armature. Maybe give them separate cage masters, but that seem like an overkill.
Here is blendfile if someone is interested. 0_belt.blend (1.1 MB)
