Skin weights

Profile: Human or Creature

Profile in the Ped Creator is Human or Creature. Human is the default and suits every human-shaped character.

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1. 11. Profile: Human or Creature
2. 22. Loose clothing: skirts, robes and capes
3. 33. Method: Volume for non-human bodies
4. 44. Options: leave them on

Creature is for monsters, beast-men and robots on two legs. It changes three things:

• Claws and animal faces keep their shape: Fit vanilla hands and Fit vanilla head are switched off.
• The head moves without face bones, so talking does not pull a monster face into a human mouth.
• Wide or long-armed bodies no longer raise the height warning.

Creature does not repair a broken mesh, and it does not move joints that were found in the wrong place. The left and right check in Skeleton covers that. Changing the profile marks Skin weights as changed.

Loose clothing

Loose clothing in the Ped Creator is for skirts, robes and capes. It is off by default.

A skirt hides the gap between the legs, so the joint detection puts hips and knees too low. Without the switch, the fabric between the legs is pulled apart when the ped runs. With it:

• Pelvis, hips, knees, ankles and toes come from the rig of your file, when it has one: VRM, VRoid, Mixamo, Unreal or Biped.
• Loose fabric below the hips moves softly with both legs instead of tearing between them.
• Joint corrections stay.

In our tests the hips of a robe and of two skirt models moved from about 30 cm too low to 5.5 cm. The tear between the legs was gone when running, sprinting, kicking and sitting on a chair.

The Ped Creator suggests the switch itself. If the hips were found more than 12 cm from the rig of your file, a note in this step says so.WATCH FOR repeats it. After a preview with the switch on, the line under it reads “Last preview: hips and knees from your model's own skeleton.”

A model without its own rig, such as one made from a picture, gets this on its own. When the detected hips sit below 40 % of the height, the Ped Creator places hips and knees at normal body proportions and lets the clothing below the hips move loosely with both legs. The step then shows Long clothing hides the hips, so the hip and knee joints were placed from normal body proportions (the detection had them at the hem) and the clothing below the hips moves loosely with both legs. Check the hip and knee joints in Skeleton. In our tests the hips of a long coat moved from 31.6 cm below the GTA root to 0.9 cm.

Reference body

Reference body picks the GTA bodies the Ped Creator copies the skin behaviour from: Auto, Male or Female. Auto is the default and picks the closest match.

Leave it on Auto. Try Male or Female only when the chest or hips of your ped bend like the other body type, and compare both previews.

Method: Standard or Volume

Method sets how the Ped Creator spreads the skin weights over the body. Standard is the default.

• Standard

  Humans and human-shaped characters.

• Volume

  Bodies that are not human-shaped: very wide bodies, tails, big armour.

In our tests Volume cut the stretching of a wide brute when running, but its hands tore. Try it on a non-human body, compare both previews and keep the better one.

The error card for failed skin weights suggests it too: Rigging stopped halfway with “Check the joints, or try the Volume method in Skin weights.”

Blend, twist, muscles and hair

The Ped Creator has four more switches under Options, all on by default. Leave them on unless one causes a visible problem.

• Blend 12 bodies

  What it does:Copies the skin behaviour from 12 GTA bodies and blends them, for smoother joints.
  Turn it off:Only if the elbows look odd.

• Twist bones

  What it does:Forearms and thighs twist without collapsing.
  Turn it off:Hardly ever.

• Muscle helpers

  What it does:Shoulders, knees and elbows stay full when bent.
  Turn it off:Hardly ever.

• Hair follows the head

  What it does:Loose parts above the neck move with the head, long hair included.
  Turn it off:When a part above the neck should move with the body instead.

Hair follows the head keeps long hair behind the neck on the head and blends it softly into the back at the tips. That stops it stretching when the ped bends forward, for example getting into a car. Strands in front of the shoulders can still cut into the shoulders in some poses, as vanilla long hair does.