Unwanted deformations when posing rig

I am new to Blender and have been following “The Art of Effective Rigging in Blender” tutorial to rig my character. For some reason, when I pose certain bones I get unwanted deformations, for example, when I rotate the eye, the ear deforms or when I pose the eyelid, the forehead deforms. I have tried removing weight paints from these areas but the problem remains. If anyone can help I would really appreciate it.

Not sure I can help, but I do have a clue. select one of the vertices that are deforming and bring up the n panel to the right of the 3d view, there should be an indication there (under the item tab) of which groups it belongs to. I think I have seen similar issues before where someone was not clear through the weight painting colors what belongs to what.

vertex-groups-n-panel

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Yep that worked thanks a lot. I’m having to select vertices one by one though and deleting all the unwanted groups which is going to take a long time! Shift selecting more than one vertice isn’t working. Is there a way to just select an entire area of vertices, the ear for example and delete groups? Also, how will this problem be avoided when creating new bones?

You can remove any number of selected vertices from a vertex group by selecting those vertices, then looking on properties/object data/vertex groups. Select the appropriate vertex group from the list, then click the “remove” button.

The quality of autoweights can be iffy. It’s hard to say what your precise issues are without seeing a file, but manual weight painting is often necessary to correct what autoweights hand you. Weight painting has plenty of great tools. I’ll give you an example. It’s common for neck weights to bleed too far onto the head. So switch to weight paint, select your neck group, switch to “multiply” mode with weight 0.0, and alt LMB to drag a gradient that multiplies the neck group by 0 where you start dragging and 1 where you end to reduce the influence of the neck bone. Interfaces may vary.

@bandages already answered, sorry I didn’t get a notification.

EDIT: Actually, I don’t have much experience with weight painting the only times I have used an armature I manually named the vertex groups and assigned them by selecting them, rather than use auto-weights, in my case though I didn’t need gradations of influence so it probably doesn’t apply here.

@bandages, I think I have seen you answer questions about weight painting when the color is blue but the influence still exists, is that something that happpens?

Color doesn’t matter. If you have weights of 0.01, you won’t be able to tell the difference between that and 0.0, but 0.01 weights can still have a strong effect if the weighted bone is distant from the vertex. Look at the actual weights on the sidebar, it’s really the only way to know what’s going on.

The more common problem is when somebody sees that something is weighted 1.0 (red as red can be) and doesn’t realize that it can still be weighted to another bone.

It’s also possible to make a mistake by not paying attention to parenting. Let’s say you manipulate your arm bone and some stray vertex in the middle of your chest moves. You select that vertex and remove it from your arm group, but it still moves! Then maybe it’s not the arm that’s moving it. Maybe it’s a child of the arm that moves when you move the arm (like a finger). Again, it’s best just to select the vertex and look at the actual numbers and assignments on the sidebar.

Yeah, the only problem is that you have to select each vertex to find out where the problems are, just thought that was what the OP was asking about. Yeah every time I have tried weight painting I end up getting into a mess…

Thanks

Yeah-- you’re kind of looking at individual vertex’s weights on the sidebar just to be able to figure out what’s happening with the rest of your mesh. If these aren’t single-ish stray verts, but broader problems, then you might look at the sidebar for just one vert, and figure that nearby vertices have the same problem. (Nothing wrong with double-checking that though.) Actually fixing it would be done with broader tools, like the multiply gradient I mentioned above. There’s a diagnostic phase and a fix phase, if that makes sense. There are often easy-ish fixes that aren’t immediately apparent to people new to weight painting, because they’re just not familiar with all the tools at their disposal; some experience goes a long way. I have to admit that I do plenty out-of-the-box thinking when it comes to weights though. (Remember, your tools aren’t just straight painting, but also operations like “smooth vertex weights” and also modifiers like vertex weight edit, mix, proximity, data transfer.)

You may find this useful as well.

Gotta dive into this stuff at some point.

Thanks for all the help. Have a lot of info here to look into over the next while!