I've been working on a human for 2 days, but every time I parent the skeleton to the model, the legs bend the wrong way. I rotate the pole as I saw in an instructional vid, getting the skeleton to move correctly. However, when I then paint weights, the model deforms extremely -- as in, when I make it even slightly green, it deforms while I'm painting.
I then tried fixing the leg's pole angles before parenting, but even then, the weight painting always causes extreme deformities. It only seems to paint correctly when the pole angle is 0, but in most cases, having it at 0 doesn't allow for the leg to move correctly.
I saw an instructional video on this, and the artist was easily able to change the pole angle without affecting the weight painting.