I’ve noticed that my mesh occasionally deforms slightly in Setup Mode, even when I haven’t manually altered it. As a result, I frequently have to reset these distorted meshes and painstakingly rebind their bones & repaint their weights.
So, my questions are:
① What operations could unintentionally cause mesh deformation? (I’d like to identify and avoid them in the future.)
② Is there a way to reset mesh deformations in Setup Mode without affecting the bound bones and weights?
Unintentional mesh deformation in Setup Mode can occur due to several reasons. One common cause is editing the mesh without the "Deformed" option checked, which can lead to distortion when exiting edit mode. Additionally, moving bones or changing their transforms without proper compensation can also affect the mesh. Nonuniform scaling of bones and incorrect binding poses can lead to unexpected deformations. It's important to ensure that any transformations are done with bone and image compensation to prevent these issues.
Unfortunately, resetting mesh deformations in Setup Mode without affecting the bound bones and weights is not straightforward. The "Reset" function typically resets the mesh to its initial state, which includes removing weights and keys. However, you can use the "Update bindings" feature to set a new pose as the mesh's setup pose, which can help maintain the current bone bindings and weights. This approach allows you to adjust the mesh without losing the existing setup.
kBlankii In addition to what Spinebot said, please also pay attention if you're performing the binding or editing of your mesh in animate mode instead of setup:
https://esotericsoftware.com/blog/Mesh-weight-workflows#Be-mindful-of-when-you-bind-meshes-to-bones
Testing carelessly in setup also may cause it (the paragraph under the previous in the article I linked above)
If you accidentally deform a mesh, the quickest way to reset it is find a bone bound to the mesh that didn't cause movement of your vertices between setup and animate mode, change the weights of the affected vertices 100% on said bone, then in setup mode you can press "Update" in the weight panel to save the new bone configuration for the given mesh, and change the weights again to how you actually need them.
