Maya skinning nightmare

#1

Dear CGtalkers,

I am now stuck completely with my biped character skinning. It is very sad, because I love everything in 3D (and therefore cannot decide in what particular area to specialize), but I HATE skinning!!! :banghead:
The thing is - there are too many different approaches. Each tutorial I watched uses different approach. Worst is that the authors explain it mostly superficial - something like “I like this and that, but you just try it yourself and decide for yourself”.
I watched for example, Digital Tutors - Creative Development Speed Skinning Techniques in Maya with Farley Chery; checked the chapter on skinning in “Mastering Maya” of E. Keller and watched stuff on youtube. It is all very different and not nicely explained. I wish there were some biped skinning tutorial from 3D Buzz :cry:
Anyway, I thought some of you might know a couple of good links to skinning and can share with me! Meanwhile, I go back to my practical learning by doing :banghead:

#2

Hey there,
I know skinning can be a pain, but I used the techniques shown in the The Skinned Character Rig DVD by Gnomon Workshop(http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/product/468/The-Skinned-Character-Rig). It shows a skinning method where all vertices on the character are weighted 100% to a single root joint, then as you go through each joint in the hierarchy, you can select the vertices that are to be weighted to that particular joint and use ONLY the ADD paint weights command, and never using the other paint weights operations. Using Replace,Scale, and Smooth will disburse the vertices randomly all over the character’s body, thereby creating the frustration that many get when they’re skinning. This link below will explain this process, but the above DVD helped me out big time. Hope this helps.

http://www.paulnaas.com/canada/mart420/handouts/WeightPaintingTutorial.pdf

#3

Wow, thanks, this is exactly the method I was looking for (putting all weights on a root)!!! :bounce:

#4

I can second toolrush’s comment. since i’ve bought this dvd i’ve never looked at skinning in another way!!

#5

Yep, it’s great!

#6

Replace doesnt affect in any bad way the skin cluster if you replace a value higer then the one is already there . The problems comes when you start subtracting values and maya normalize the skinCluster , sometimes you get influences you dont want everywhere,
What i usually do is to start from deafult skin cluster and weight every bone at 1 in the area i think should affect , then from this “rigid” skin i start working and smoothing the wrights.There is a tfsmoothSkin plugin that works really good.

Oh i forgot if your skincluster is in interactive mode NEVER hit cntrl Z , 90% of the times it makes artefacts in your skinCluster

#7

If you got access to maya 2011+ paint in POST, just try and forget the interactive mode. Interactive is a nightmare, can’t undo, can’t paint subtractive and you can’t smooth without other influences coming in from nowhere.

#8

@tim

To be honest I dont use post mode for SkinCluster. Because I dont have a visual feedback from the white /black map because what you see it s not what your really get and that bothers me a lot . After years of skinning I’m used to interactive mode limits and learned how to avoid them but I do like better to have a visual feedback . So I still stick with interactive mode

#9

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