Easier skinning in Maya please!

[svenip]

i really don't know max, but the way that maya goes with the painting is the most intuitive i know and i can think off. so do you have a specific problem with the weighting with painting ? when i would really like to help you !

[Mikkel Jans]

You can use the Component Editor to edit the weight on vertexs or the Script weightTool.mel on highend3d.com

[ACFred]

Tudor,

For game models, I find that rigid binding works best for me, as is the case with most low-poly objects in general.
Then, adjusting the weights is much easier for the smaller number of joints you'll be working with and will probably an easier translate to the game engine.

Also, if you end up using smooth binding, you can go to Skin|Edit Smooth Skin|Paint Skin Weights Tool [] to bring up the options and paint the influence. Since I've gotten my Wacom tablet, painting weights onto models is SO much easier, although a tablet is certainly not necessary to get the job done.

Another trick I find handy with smooth binding is to go into the Paint Skin Weights tool, select a joint, pick Smooth and then click on the Flood button three or four times. This is a crude way to go about it, but when I'm in a rush, it helps to quickly distribute the weights more evenly in broad areas, leaving me only the flexible, stretchy areas to work with after that. Actually, I tend to do the smooth & flood thing right out of the gate in most situations.

Hope that helps. If you let us know which binding method you're using, we could probably come up with some more specific help. Or e-mail me privately if you'd rather.

[Tudor]

ok.. the problem I have is bigger the bigger the polycount
When skinning Maya creates a falloff radius for each bone.
The falloff is often not quite as good as you want it to be. It might be too soft, too hard, or just influencing parts of the body you dont want it to influence.
The only control I have over the influence is the falloff radius. Why can't we have some visual feedback over the falloff. Like one circle around the bone showing where the bone influences 100% and an outer ring showing where it falls off to nothing.
When I have skinned a huge character, or lets call it trying to skin it, and the falloff don't work properly the back or stomach may deform oddly. Having an interactive feedback would let me just change the falloff value and see the result in realtime.

ACFred: I will look into the smoothing thing. Never thought about that :) And this particular character I dont want to adjust point by point is 22,000 polys, 11,000 points.. Rigid skinning is not at option. You gotta love the Xbox :)

Take a look at these examples.:



http://www.dalnet.se/~tudor/download/bone1.gif

http://www.dalnet.se/~tudor/download/bone2.gif

[DrAdamDinosaur]

I think your best bet would be to rigid bind the bones to the mesh then using the edit membership tool and the component editor to set influences. This will allow you to set the weighting for any vertex by hand.

[Tudor]

Point by point is not an option.
11,000 points. That would take me a week. Skinning the character I am working on would take an hour in lightwave.

Nah... ACFreds thing about smooth seems to be the only thing that would actually make thigs easier.

Tried deep exploration yesterday. It does import weightmaps from lightwave, but just the default 1/distance^16 value. It does not accept my painted weights. Still it looks better then Mayas default.

I guess that weighmaps just isn't Mayas strongpoint.
Sorry if it seems like I'm being hard on Maya, but I am really dissapointed with this.:hmm:

[Jhonus]

with rigid bind you don't have to adjust point by point. When you apply the rigid bind it will be roughly correct. Then you can interactively paint the points on or off in broad sweeps and apply your deformers

and for smoothskinning you do have visual feedback of the falloff. You have a greyscale map which shows the influence area of the selected joint. Obviously, 100% black corresponds to geometry not affected by the joint through to 100% white (geometry 100% affected by the joint).

When painting this map it directly adjusts the influence, not just the falloff radius as you said.

This is better than the circular radius idea you talked about as it displays the influenced area in exact detail. (the falloff will rarely be circular with on a character mesh).

When binding using smooth skinning it helps to set the dropoff rate lower than the default.

I'm not sure but you seem to be determined to find inadequacies with the tools before fully understanding them

Patience! :bounce: :D :bounce: :D

[Tudor]

True that I am a bit impatient with Maya.
Coming from another program I am trying to solve things as I do in that program. When that don't work it feels like starting all over as a beginner again.

If I could just get more visual feedback when doing the initial skinning it would make it so much easier. Tweaking small stuff is no problem at all. Paint weigts works great then.

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.