Any 3D animators here able to answer me a simple yes or no question?

[chrono1081]

Hi guys,

If I am making a 3D animated character should I paint skin weights before or after I create its basic animation?

Sorry for the strange question but I got thrown in to this position for a class project since I know Maya (but I don't animate in Maya!).

My character is rigged, but I noticed that without animating it first, painting weights isn't working so hot so I assume I paint after I animate but I wanted to see what the general workflow was.

 

[YESimBLUNTED]

I have always painted my weights right after skinning, with basic movements of course to tell where the adjusting needs to take place.

 

[chrono1081]

Thanks!

I'm a programmer but got thrown in to the artist role for a game project for class, which is normally fine except for this time I needed to animate a character, which is not fine.

 

[oxygencube]

Also make sure you UV the character before you rig him.

 

[chrono1081]

Also make sure you UV the character before you rig him.

Thanks! I got that part covered (although my map has seams for some reason but no biggie).

I'm usually pretty good with the modeling part and can what I need made, its the animation part throwing me for a loop.

 

[Lone Deranger]

Thanks! I got that part covered (although my map has seams for some reason but no biggie).

Make sure you paint over the borders of the UV shells by at least a few pixels. Render engines frequently sample more than one texel (a pixel in your texture) at a time in order to perform filtering operations. If it encounters an out of place colour beyond the borders (say black) it’ll influence the colour that gets rendered, thus causing seams.

So, model, UV, rig & paint weights, make any necessary changes to model if required and fix any UV problems as a result. Then texture, shade/lookdev, animate and render.

 

[chrono1081]

Make sure you paint over the borders of the UV shells by at least a few pixels. Render engines frequently sample more than one texel (a pixel in your texture) at a time in order to perform filtering operations. If it encounters an out of place colour beyond the borders (say black) it’ll influence the colour that gets rendered, thus causing seams.

So, model, UV, rig & paint weights, make any necessary changes to model if required and fix any UV problems as a result. Then texture, shade/lookdev, animate and render.

Thanks for the tip I ended up learning that the hard way. As soon as I animated I got seams so I started painting a few pixels out.

I'm pretty sure I'm going above and beyond what is required in class anyway but I have a thing against handing in garbage so I try and do my best even if I am a programmer playing the artist role

Here's how my little guy turned out. Thats his "idle" pose. I could have done much better on the texture painting but with two weeks left and an entire game level to make theres just no time. He works though for a class project.