Painting Skin Weights Questions

[stjons]

What settings are you using when painting weights? From what I have learnt, it is best to always use the add and smooth tools. The reason for this is that each CV has a total weight of 1 to be spread between multiple joints. So if you remove some of the influence of one cv from a particular joint, it will be distributed onto another joint. The problem with this is that you do not have control over where that will be. So by adding, you have more control over where you are placing the influence.

When you are happy with how you have the weight on a certain joint you can click the 'Toggle Hold Weights on Selected' which will lock that joints influence.

You can also go into your component editor and see where each Cv's influence is.

I hope I am explaining this ok, I'm still learning this myself but thought I would try help you out.

Cheers
Jonny

[MrMint]

There is also an option in the paint-skin-weight-window to toggle "lock weights".

[shinyprem]

Hi..!
I think its coz of max weight each verts can share is restricted, which can be adjusted by going to
skin>Edit skin smooth skin> set max weight.
Do this by locking the bones weight and then unlock and edit the weights afterwards.
Rgds,

[Limanima]

I'm also new to Maya, and problably I'm gonna say something stupid, but I like to help, so maybe this will be useful:
When I first used Paint Weights I had the same problem. But then I figured it out. When you paint weights on Joint B, you are also changing weights on Joint A. This happens because vertices have to belong to a joint(the sum of the weights from all the joints on a vertice have to be 100%). If you add/reduce weights on vertices for the Joint B, those weights will be reduced/added in joint A(notice I changed the order of add/reduce in this sentence).

I'm not sure I've made myself clear.

[Darksuit]

you might also look in the followign thread..

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=6203263#post6203263

[justinms66]

I get it now. i didn't understand the weight distribution. Thanks everyone!

[EightBit]

I find it easiest to lock all the joints and then unlock only the joints I want to share the influence of the verts I'm painting.

This is a bit primitive, but you might find it useful for locking joints.
www.thepixelfarm.com/MayaStuff/pixl_jointLocker.py

Usage:
Place a copy in script dir ( ie C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\maya\2011-x64\scripts)
Script Editor/Python Tab:
import pixl_jointLocker

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