limbs keep losing their rigidity

[jonathanb51952184]

It seems that I keep getting the arms to work only to see that they've lost their rigidity again. It just happened now as I recorded leg movements through dragging. Right now, the right hand can be pushed up into the shoulder making it really short. Usually, the left arm fares better than the left. But right now they both get really skinny when I bend them. One thing I find peculiar is that the r_arm within the the rarm contains an origin whereas the l_arm does not. And I can't delete it. I've attached the puppet. It's an altered version of Dr. Applesmith from the website. If anyone can have a look, I would so much appreciate it. Oops I guess the .puppet extension is not allowed. I changed it to ppt. I don't know what that is but I gave it a shot. I also attached the .psd file.

[TheOriginalGC]

You can share a puppet by uploading it to a file-sharing service like dropbox or google drive and then posting the link. 

[jonathanb51952184]

Thank you Original! I just uploaded my puppet to medis fire. https://www.mediafire.com/folder/htbh0fz2diqmy/Share

The left arm works acceptably.

[j-saito]

Can you try changing the Mesh Shape mode of "rarm" to "Contour" and see if you like it?

[jonathanb51952184]

That helped a lot. Thanks J! The arms still get skinny and weird when I bend them but I can work with it. If you have any ideas on how I can keep the arms substantial when they bend, that would be cool.

[j-saito]

Terry available on the Puppet Maker page has a workaround for the tapering.

Handles without tags get ignored by the deformation system. But by giving handles some harmless tag (in this case, Magnet), the deformation system will recognize the handles and try to avoid deformations around them. You can also achieve the same effect with very short stick handles without tags. This may be better to avoid cluttering the rig with unused tags.

[jonathanb51952184]

Great idea J-Saito. I will try that