Advanced Character Rigging - Part Two

Part Two

Back to Advanced character rigging Introduction Now it's time to "skin" the bones.

All of the meshes need to be:

• triangulated (F3 (Modeling mode), Maya menu - Polygons > Triangulate)
• have their histories deleted (Maya menu - Edit > Delete by Type > History)
• have their transformations frozen (Maya menu - Modify > Freeze Transformations)

Next we'll need to attach those meshes to the skeleton rig. In the outliner window (Maya menu - Window > Outliner . . ., select all the meshes & the skeleton (hold Ctrl while clicking the meshes & the skeleton):

Then Edit > Select Hierarchy:

And now hit F2 for Animation Mode. Go to the menu Skin > Bind Skin > Smooth Bind [ ] & click the square to the right of the menu item:

which will bring up the bind skin options:

& use those values.

Now bring up the Paint Skin Weights tool (Maya menu - Skin > Edit Smooth Skin > Paint Skin Weights Tool [ ] & click the square to the right. The Paint Skin Weights Tool will replace the Attribute Editor.