Deformation apply armature

Question

I would like to apply the pose and the corrective smooth, but the corrective doesn't work if I do it the object has a deformation! How can I solve it? The problem are the feet.

Answer 1

Note: This does not answer the exact question of how to apply the Corrective Smooth but shows how to change the character's pose from a "high-heel pose" to a "flat shoe pose".

The root problem that you have here is the bad deformation. The Corrective Smooth just hides the problem but doesn't fix it in a proper way. It also has crazy high settings for smoothing.

Let's delete the modifier and have a look at the model.

The Problem - Bad Deformation

The "High Heels" rest position looks good:

but the desired pose looks terrible without the Corrective Smooth modifier:
^{This is probably caused by too many bones and from them poorly calculated weights.}

Let's Fix It With A Better Bone Layout

Preparation/fix the mesh - First, make a backup of the character. Then select the body mesh and remove duplicated vertices (Edit mode, M > Merge By Distance, use default distance of 0.0001). There will be 68 vertices removed.

There is also a small area at the right shoulder and at both armpits. Here the mesh has flipped faces and duplicated edges. Use the Face Orientation overlay to check the mesh. Delete the red faces at the shoulder, delete the unwanted edges, and re-create the faces. Under the arms, the mesh might only be overlapping/distorted.

New Bone Layout - Next, edit the armature. Remove the all bones of the foot, and create 3 new bones to control the shape of the foot and the toes. One bone for all 5 toes is sufficient.

Bind the armature to the mesh (Ctrl+P > With Automatic Weights. Then go to Pose mode and change the pose of the foot as you like.

Rogue Vertices - The left foot has 3 rogue vertices that do their own thing and don't follow the armature for some reason. Let's get rid of them. Enable the On Cage option for the Armature modifier. Now you can fix the mesh in Edit mode. Just delete and re-create these vertices with Grid Fill.

^{The On Cage option of the armature modifier}

Polish The Shape - Last but not least, you can adjust the shape of the foot in Sculpt mode. Don't forget to enable the X-mirror for symmetry and look at reference images to get the right shape. For the toes you can create Face Sets and limit the influence of brushes to the Faces Sets. Select the tip vertex of the toe in Edit mode, and select More Vertices with Ctrl+Numpad+ to select the whole toe. Then switch to Sculpt mode and create a Face Set from the selection (Face Sets menu). Note: The big toe is connected to the other toe. You can fix this in Edit mode.

^{The shape keys here only exist to illustrate the difference.}

When you are happy with the result apply the Armature modifier to make the pose the new permanent rest pose of the mesh. Eventually, you can put on her flat shoes and re-bind the armature to animate, pose and print the model.

Answer 2

You can convert your mesh to mesh: in object mode, "object" menu, then "convert to" and "mesh".

Answer 3

The default corrective smooth operates on original mesh coordinates to determine how to smooth the mesh. When you apply the armature, the effect of the armature is baked into the "original" mesh coordinates, and so the corrective smooth does nothing-- the mesh is in its undeformed state.

To apply both the pose and the corrective smooth, you'll need to use bind coordinates instead. From left to right: live armature only; live armature and corrective smooth from original coords; live armature and corrective smooth to bound coordinates; applied armature with the same, bound corrective smooth.

To bind the corrective smooth in the same way that it would function from original coordinates, first pin the Basis shapekey if the mesh has any shapekeys, disable your armature modifier temporarily, set the rest source as "bind coords", and click the bind button. Then, restore your original shapekeys and armature modifier.

Additional modifiers on the stack may require tweaking. In general, you want to bind without any deforming modifiers active.

After binding the corrective smooth, it will remember the bind even after applying the armature. You can apply the modifiers in order, or alt-c convert to->mesh to apply both modifiers.