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18 comments
Damn, way to make a guy feel inadequate.
Your bone weights look fantastic in the screenshots. If you'd be willing, I would love some advice on how to make it as nice as yours.
EDIT: I figured it out. In outfit studio if I want a part to be hard I just had to erase all the bone weight influences on all the bones I don't want it to follow. So for example I painted it full red to just follow the backbone and it looks much better when the character bends over. I just need to do this for the other objects now.
Another thing to note is that if you are copying bone weights, the parts of the outfit which are not really clothing (the canisters and the boosters, for example) can bend to other parts of the reference body if they stick out too much. For example, the booster on the back might turn with the shoulders even though the booster has absolutely no contact with it. As such, you may want to copy bone weights only for the clothing and apply bone weights manually to stuff like your canister and holster.
I apologise if I'm not making sense, I'm not really that good at explaining it. If you'd like, feel free to ask or PM me. I'd be more than happy to assist with the bone weights if you want. I usually do mine manually (with mixed results, though).
Also, how did you apply the bone weights for the gloves, if you don't mind me asking? I cant seem to apply bone weights to gloves all that well.
As for the gloves all I did was import the female hands nif and then transfer those bone weights to my glove models. I didn't have to do any manual painting of weights either. Maybe mine worked so well since I made sure when I created the model it was made in perfect edge loops and quads so the deformation would be correct. I do know from doing paint weighting in 3D Programs like Maya that correct edge loops on a model makes a huge difference when it is rigged later. I kinda applied the knowledge I had of the past and assumed Outfit Studio worked in a similar matter which looks like it does. So I guess my answer would be clean topology for organic models is the key factor in the deformations looking very nice. In first person the gloves look really great when I slow down time and reload a gun or throw a punch, can't wait to actually play the game one day and use my armor lol.
Thanks for the advice, it is definitely helpful and will help me speed up my workflow whenever I make another armor. I can whip out models and textures real fast and easy in a week or so, its mostly the converting part into Fallout 4 and learning the ropes that slows me down.
For your second question, I'm not so sure. Instead of deleting the mesh, you could just select "fixed weight brush," put the strength of the slider at its highest, and hold the "alt" key while clicking over the mesh to quickly remove the weights. I know, there really should be a "clear bone weights" option, but I'm not seeing it.
I'm not sure if you were already aware of this, but if you want some advice, here are a few things to note:
1) If you use "copy bone weights," it will base it off of the reference. Usually, this is a base female or male body. However, you can also set a piece of clothing (such as the pants) as a reference and select "copy bone weights" for the holster or canister for more natural bone weights. Note that before you do this, you must ensure that the pants have their own bone weights first (copied over already from the reference male/female body). Remeber that reference meshes don't appear in-game, so if you want to turn the pants back to a normal mesh, either select the base female/male body as a reference or just right-click and duplicate the mesh.
2) The mask tool also works wonders with weights. For example, imagine if your belt is one mesh. This includes the belt buckle and the belt itself. You want the belt buckle to be rigid, but don't care too much about the rest of the belt. You can use the mask tool to mask over the belt buckle and then select "copy bone weights." This would ensure that the leather part of the belt adheres to the weights of the reference body, but not the buckle. You can then clear the mask (or even better, invert it) and apply the bone weights manually to the buckle to ensure it stays rigid.
3) This is a culmination of both points above. Say that you finished applying the bone weights to the belt and now you want to do the same to a holster. This holster has a strap attached to the belt and another strap wrapped around the leg. You want to copy the bone weights for the straps around the leg, but you also want the strap attached to the belt to have similar bone weights as the belt itself so that it looks nice. Here's what you can do: mask the entire holster except for the part of the strap attached to the belt. Set the belt as the reference. Then select "copy bone weights" for the holster. After that, invert the mask (or press "ctrl + i"). The strap attached to the belt should now be the only part masked. Now, set your pants as the reference and then select "copy bone weights" on the holster again. BAM, now your holster should have consistent bone weights for both the leg AND the belt.
Again, I apologise if I'm not making myself too clear. Don't hesitate to ask me for further clarification or any other help! And thanks for the advice about the gloves. My glove meshes really just have to fit the base fallout hands a lot better, then.
Wish I could endorse this image 10 times, I can kind of sort of begin to see what workflow might look like.
Personally I use 3D Coat for all my texture work. I still create custom textures, alpha maps, and use my camera to get photos of textures so I can make my own PBR scratch build materials. The programs for 3D Modeling and textures have gotten more streamlined but you still need a good baseline and understanding of 3D workflow of course to still produce good results. I feel like having come from the dark ages of 3D Modeling where everything was so basic and tedious has really made these new workflows I use even more solid and easy for me since I went though the tough processes back in the day.
3D Coat sounds super amazing, I'm going to attempt to learn the program. I got the trials and even the stock PBRs look really nice, it's very exciting that we can make our own! I like 3D modeling. I feel similarly about coming from a dark age, when I ditched Blender for 3DS Max(Plus some claim there are supposedly even better 3D modeling software! Zbrush is one but I think I need a prototype model in order to sculpt with).
What kind of camera do you use? That could also be something for me to look into.
Ready to kick ass in this cool creation of yours!
If you need any screenshots taken for the modpage whenever this releases, let me know. I'm available.
I need something specific to do, lol.