Envelopes from Haedes..

[Ben]

I'm attempting to Skin a long, trunk-like object with an IK chain of about 20 bones. But for some reason, it keeps giving me completely un-helpful envelopes. They're arranged so that they lie accross each bone rather than along it..

I've tried re-applying the skin modifyer a few hundred times, making a new set of bones, even re-modelled the object- none of which has even remotely helped.

Any ideas..?

Ben

[kuman]

hmm i've seen this behavior before where if a bone seems too short and the volume of surface is too wide it will put the envelopes perpendicular to the bone length.

i didn't investigate enough to find the clearest answer to this, however if its just 20 bones you might consider just turning the envelopes by hand. if you look at them in the center is two squares and you can select one and drag it to change the direction of the envelope

-k

[jbw]

Another option would be to forget the envelopes and manually add vertex weights - I tend to do this rather than use envelopes for most things. I'll select the verts that lay inside the bones area and make that 100% then once all verts are 100% I'll go back and start adjusting them so that they blend evenly i.e.

Vert 1 - bone1 = 100%, bone 2 = 0%
Vert 2 - bone1 = 75%, bone 2 = 25%
Vert 3 - bone1 = 50%, bone 2 = 50%
Vert 4 - bone1 = 25%, bone 2 = 75%
Vert 5 - bone1 = 0%, bone 2 = 100%

ta,
jbw

[Net Admiral]

mm I'm not sure but I noticed that sometimes using "non-scale uniform" causes a bad skinning results as u described, so try to apply "reset X-form" to your object before using skin modifier ... u could find this function in utility panel... and if it did not work try to collapse your stack to editable mesh...
________
Motorcycle tires

[RageCage]

yeah I agree with jbw, using envelopes for bones tend to give you a quick fix but when you really want somthing done, you manually put in the influence weights