I have a character that has lots of vertex groups, and they all have their own weight paint.
I added a new vertex group for me to weight paint (so the character body doesn’t clip) and there are now loads of artifacts (where I didn’t weight paint, like the hands). The mask is super inconsistent. What am I doing incorrectly?
Is it because I have other vertex groups?
Mask modifier may be counterintuitive.
By default, it hides what is not part of vertex group.
It has a threshold slider to limit effect to weight values.
It has a smooth option to cut faces and obtain a smoother boundary between hidden and visible faces.
If you have an issue where you did not paint, that means that problematic weights were automatically generated.
Or issue is not related to what mask modifier or weight painting.
Or you are facing a weird bug.
How would you go about the problem at hand - I need to hide the body as there is sufficient clipping thats hard to manage during my animation. If weight painting is causing issues, what should I do?
One option to reduce the clipping would be with shape keys.
Put the character into a pose that shows the problem, then create a shape key. You can edit/sculpt the body mesh in the shape key, so that it doesn’t clip any more.
You can keyframe the shape key to dial it in or out, as necessary.
If I had issues with mask modifier, I would probably try a boolean modifier or a Geometry Nodes modifier.
But I use Clipping Region operator Alt B, most of time in viewport.
Or textures in shaders for rendering.
Sometimes Blender doesn’t handle live modifiers in weight paint very well. Generative modifiers are especially tough; using any kind of enabled symmetry is also unlikely to play nicely with live modifiers. I wouldn’t recommend using a live mask modifier while weight painting.
To control visibility of the mesh while weight painting, just hide geo in edit mode. When you go into weight paint mode, it will remain hidden.