Wednesday, 13 April 2011

Post 30 - Skinning

I have begun the skinning process. This is a very similar, if not identical process to that of 3ds Max. However, in Maya I had to select every bone individually. This was the case as not all bone required skinning (e.g. the hip bone as there is a hip override on top of it). There is a way of using envelopes, which is the 'Interactive Skin Bind Tool'. However, I used the 'Smooth Bind Tool'. This one is the most mainstream and commonly used. This from the start when skinned looked rather nice and seemed to work rather well. Then, I proceeded to use the 'Edit Paint Weights' tool. The video link below demonstrates this tool and how to use it when faced with bad deformity.


The paint weights tool is almost the same as the one in 3ds Max, but with a couple of improvements. The scale isn't done by colour but rather from black to white (white - high influence, black - little to no influence). 3ds Max had a blend weight tools, which did work, but was a tad slow. Maya's equivalent is the flood feature. When the paint brush is set to smooth, clicking the flood button smooths all the the influence out over the selected joint. Very quick and useful. What took 3-5 days in Max took about a day in Maya.

I am happy with the result. There are other things you can do to tweak it, such as deformers and driven keys if there are problems with the mesh but the smooth bind skin tool is so effective there is no need to do so at this stage.




'Paint Weights' tool clip - LINK

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