Skelegons and weight maps :S

[Samoht VII]

I have been trying to rig the most basic of characters with skelegons and weight maps and i'm trying to make it act 'normal'. so the joints act right and the geometry transforms properly etc. I have followed a pretty good tutorial but by the end of it, regardless of how well i follow it it always seems unnatural and just plain bad. Here are a few images of some problems i run into.

Is it the way the geometry is set up? or the weight maps need to have a smoother run off? are there too few or not enough skelegons?
I am still a beginner at this stuff so any help would be appreciated.

I added the lws/lwo if anyone cares to take a closer look for me.

Thanks

[RebelHill]

First off you'll want to have your obejcts subdivision order set to last... that's the source of your really hard corners. Second, blurring your weights will help a bit, but makes less difference than you might naturally think due to the way LW weights work. Also, remember LWs weights are subtractive (meaning they reduce a bones area of influence rather than creating it specifically)... so also getting weights on the right verts is important... so if verts in the arm, even if near the body, are explicitly part of the arm then there should be no "body" map on them, etc.

Also, good topology and the like will make a big difference, as will the mesh density itself... so there's a lot of thigns that are very interconnected in terms of getting the right result.

[Samoht VII]

Thanks for the help,

like i said i am still a beginner at this so could you explain how to set subdivision order to last.

and what did you mean by 'good topology' and 'mesh density'. Like poly count?

Thanks heaps.

[GraphXs]

Set subdivision order to last: it's under the "Object" "Properties" (Geometry Tab) right in the middle. It's set to "first" by default.

Topology is how the model's edge loops flow from body part to body part.

Yes, mesh density has to do with the poly count. The more you have it is harder to weight the bones and it could also slow down the mesh in layout.