I’m doing a tutorial here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFVdHePUIfo I’ve already redone the hand because it came out so bad. Now I realize I may have to go at it again. Between the finger and the hand is a connector that’s supposed to bend. When I go to rotate the hand some parts of my fingers get left behind. I think my problem is the weight painting I did. Can someone tell me if this is why I’m having this problem? Is there a way to get better access to the geometry when I’m weight painting. The two fingers are very close together. Any suggestions on what I could do to fix this problem? Hopefully I wont have to redo the hand a third time.
[QUOTE][/QUOTE]This can happen if you don’t have enough loop cuts around areas where there are joints. The more loop cuts you have around joint areas the easier it is for automatic weight to work and easier to weight paint. Try adding 3 or four more loop cuts where there are joints. It will help with weight painting. You can always rotate other joints out of the way if they are to close to spots you want to paint.
Adding more loops won’t help make the vertices more accessible for painting, though they could help the flexibility of the mesh at that point. In Edit Mode you can select the verts that are hard to paint to and assign weight values “manually” in a number of ways – in the Properties pane (N-KEY in a 3D window invokes this panel), Vertex Groups section, and in the Properties Editor>Data context, under the Vertex Groups section. TIP: In the first of these options there is a button labeled “Copy” that lets you assign one vertex’s weights to any number of selected vertices, often helpful for areas hard to paint to but which should have the same weights for all bones.
The Mask option in the Weight Painting mode may also be of use to limit which vertices will accept the painted value. Only vertices selected in Edit Mode can be painted to when the Mask button is enabled.
