Posing Problems

[Curious]

How do you pose your Zspheres with clean results on your mesh as Pixolator is doing here:

Pixolator's successful posing (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=015461)

I'm trying to do the same thing, but my mesh buckles and bends in ugly ways requiring heavy resculpts. What am I doing wrong?

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200405/user_image-1085100557cmw.jpg

[TVeyes]

First of all make sure you store a Morph Target (Tool : Morph Target : Store Morph Target) when preview mode is off. Next try to rotate the elbow joint by rotating the zsphere links, not the zspheres themselves. That seems to work best for me.

So for your example rotate the two zsphere links around the zsphere you indicated. For a 90 degree rotation do not rotate the one link only, instead rotate each zsphere link 45 degrees. In other words, distribute the rotation among multiple zsphere linking chains.

Hope that works for you

[Curious]

Storing the MT doesn't seem to be making much of a difference for me.

Thanks for the tip about rotating multiple segments though. That seems to help avoid the big artifact.

I still get a rather large indented bend that will require pretty extensive reworking around the joint. Is this normal?

[TVeyes]

I do not think it is normal but the way you model the preview mesh plays a part. If for example you model an indent in preview mode that covers 2 or more zspheres it is bound to cause unwanted distorion when posed. But I am not very experienced with posing yet, I am mostly guessing. I hope someone else can help better.

[Curious]

TVeyes,

I really apreceate your help. I come from a traditional sculpting background (that clay stuff) and this may actually be my problem. I use all the transform tools to get what visualy pleases me, but I have not taken into acount what I'm doing to the mesh.

For posing sphere models is there a preferable mode to stay in (say standard or inflate deflate) that will facilitate clean meshes?