maya skinning : please help

[MasonDoran]

use the "lock weights" in the attribute editor(when using the paint skin weights tool)....that way once you have corrected the weights....and locked them for that bone....they wont change AT ALL...until you unlock them.

Also...use the component editor for more control over editing weights....

[Neil]

I think you might be using too big of a brush, and when you're rotating and painting, you might be accidentally painting another part of the model with the edge of your brush.

[ukyo]

im guessing your doing a smooth bind, if so open your option box and change your setting to a drop off rate of 2 or 3 and an influence of 2 or 3. this way not as many joint are effecting as much surface area. then you should go in with with paint weights tools. adujust your brush sizes ect.

youll also need to use the componet editor to really get the detailed smoothing your gonna wanna want.

also if its an area like a shoulder you can marquee select a section of vertices and then click on your paint weights tool. only the vertices you have selected will be effected by the pait weigts tool.

finnaly when u can also use the prune weights tool but becarefule with it it can tweak out on u sometimes. when your happy with an areas weighting you can toggle the hold option to lock that joints weighs down

goodluck its a long and tedious process, i personnaly hate rigging
but its a nessacary (sorry cant spell very godded :) )evil

[sp0rk3d]

i find that it is easy iff you remmber that you never want to "remove" weights..... only add in the beginning, as adding on one joint willl automatically remove from the apropriate joints..... However if you "remove" (ie use replace at a value less than the curent skin weight) it will ADD influence to many random joints.... after you have blocked out the main weights with out smothing...
you go through a second pass locking ALL joints except the two that you are smoothing between... (ie ALL joints lockedd except the Shoulder and Elbow when Smothing the Elbow)..... when you are done with the elbow... lock it then unlock the clavicle and smooth the shoulder ...etc.... etc...
doing this i can paint a good set of weights on a whole character in a few hours... (using mirror weights tool also)

hope that helps.... :)

[jschleifer]

The best thing to do is set up your skeleton so it works with minimal painting.. that means putting influence objects and bones close to the skin & setting up influence objects which can help parts stretch and stuff.

The best skinning rigs need NO paint work, as the model can change quite often within a production.. and if you don't have to manually paint anything, it's much easier to swap in new geometry.

-jason

[Goob]

I have written a small tutorial: http://www.goob.de/tut/smothskin.htm

hope it helps


goob.

[MaDeuce]

To answer your specific questoin, 2byt had it right when he said remember to toggle hold weights per each bone as you finish them

Also, I stay away from "reduce" because of the way normalization works within Paint Weights, it with take the left over value and spreads it out over a bunch of bones. However you can toggle normalization off when reducing and it will assign the leftover value to the next nearest bone(without the hold weights toggled) but again, just try not to reduce and avoid the hassle

Paint weights is awsome when you learn all the little rules, and 99% of the skinning can be done. It definately does not suck

[Scandell]

I too have come to the conclusion the maya point weighting is useless. I have spent hours painting weights on a character and usually the bends look worse than they did when i first started.

[a3dmonkey]

First off I'm assuming your smooth skinning here. With that in mind.

Check the Max influences .... I think Maya's default is set at 5.

Which means you will have 5 joints controlling each vertex. When I started skining I accidently left it this way and ended up with crazy stuff happening like having the leg influence the finger and vice versa. It didn't matter how much I painted there were just to many joints influencing a vertex.

Drop the influence number as ukyo suggested to 2 or 3 and reskin and paint wieghts. I use 3 max influences currently and I only use

add in 0.1 increments with and opacity of 1.0

to change weight values. I've had problems with replace , subtract and the other options but add has produced more consistent results for me.

Michael Ware
SVA Graduate Candidate
:buttrock:

[kmp3d]

yeah I though maya skin weighting was stupid too at first until I really understood what was going on. Like spork said don't remove weight only add. The think that really helped me to figure out smooth skinning is to just think that your're not really adding or removing weight from an area of skin your just moving it around to other joints.... its kind of like a balancing act. Also I another thing I heard about before but only tried recently is if you're skinning a poly mesh. Use CPS if your smoothing the mesh then bind your skeleton to the low rez mesh. It makes weighting so easy. And controlling deformations is a piece of cake.

[ilasolomon]

The best skinning rigs need NO paint work, as the model can change quite often within a production

I'll write it on top of my monitor to never forget it! I always like to see: " [click],.....voila! now it's skinned with no problem! ", ...O, my precious...

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