Okay, so I’m more used to 3DS Max than Maya, but basically I have a character rigged up in Maya and I want to duplicate the mesh so I can use the clone as a Cel shaded outline for the base mesh (via flipped normals and black texture) all while maintaining the skinning on the base mesh. I’ve attempted using the Duplicate Special since that preserves the skinning, but I cannot reassign the textures separately or modify the transform. I figure there must be some way for me to accomplish what I want to similar to 3DS Max. Could someone please give me some tips?
Question About Copying Skinned Mesh
gfk
#2
For a cel shading outline, you don’t want to actually copy the skinning. Instead, duplicate the mesh, and then connect .worldMesh[0] on the bound mesh to .inMesh[0] of the duplicate. This will make the duplicate simply use the mesh data from the original, including skinning and any other deformations. This also means it’ll follow any other changes you might make to the skinned mesh.
For a cel outline, you can then reverse normals on the duplicate mesh (which will insert itself between the mesh connection), and use a vector displacement to expand the mesh outwards a little.
By the way, this isn’t out yet, but it might interest you: https://twitter.com/arnoldrenderer/status/923294318047084545