Hello. I’m somewhat new to Blender and I could really use some help. I’ve done a lot of modeling but not much rigging. I had just started making progress in weight paining on my most recent model. The weights were working just as I was hoping they would. I went into pose mode to test it, and I don’t know if I accidentally hit a button or something. But when I went back to Weight Paint, this started happening with the entire armature. And no matter whether I physically paint it or manually set the vertexes, it doesn’t change. If I could get some advice that doesn’t involve me redoing three days of work, I’d really appreciate it.
Sorry, it looks like that wasn’t the issue. Thanks anyway.
Welcome to the forums.
Well, the problem may come from one or more sources.
My take is that you were Weight Painting with Auto Normalize Option < Options < Header < 3D Viewport, and then you accidentally Brushed somewhere else on the Body Mesh while having a specific Deform Bone Selection. When this happens, Auto Normalize makes it harder to fix manually and its better to Disabled it, at least for the fixing part: there are “Rogue Weights”.
Finding Rogue Weights can be time-consuming, especially on Rigs with tons of Deform Bones. This is where, sometimes, using some Weight Painting Mask techniques may come in handy (but this is a bit more Intermediate Rigging); you should look at those though, to avoid making accidental Rogue Weights.
Also, I recommend that you use Active instead of None, for the Zero Weights, at Weight Paint Overlays < Header < 3D Viewport; when you are on Weight Paint Mode.
It will make a Color distinction between absence of Weights (Black) and 0.000 Weights (Deep Blue).
This is a quick sample of how to use a Weight Paint Masking solution; in this case, it’s Vertex Selection Option; but I suggest you focus on its cousin, the Paint Mask Option (the process would be similar: make a Mesh Selection (Faces) on Edit Mode (having Faces Hidden also also works for even more radical protection) and then go to Weight Paint Mode.
There is one little problem though: cannot switch Bone Selection while one of those 2 Masking Options are Enabled on Weight Paint Mode, so you better Assign a Shorcut to at least 1 of them (e.g., Paint Mask Option, I use “O”) and create some muscle memory turning that on/off, otherwise you’d end up loosing the Mesh Selection on Weight Paint Mode all the time.
And here on this timestamped video of a bigger tutorial, I’ve got some instructions on how to use some Weight Paint Masking techniques on delicate areas (but those can be used anywhere):
I hope this helps.
I’ve got to be honest. A lot of this is a little advanced for me. But this will definitely be very useful for future rigging. Especially the masking. Thank you for your input.
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