Maya Weight Painting Tutorial (The Inside-out method)

[@MilesBellas]

Exceptions to Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration. "Your mother can’t produce food out of thin air, no one can. Food is the first of the five Principal Exceptions to Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration... It’s impossible to make good food out of nothing! You can Summon it if you know where it is, you can transform it, you can increase the quantity if you’ve already got some..." -The exceptions to Gamp's Law "Money, food, liquid/gas, burnable things, and living subjects = the five. Money on the grounds that the goblins are extraordinarily protective of the sanctity of currency; the next three because the effects are disastrous when the Transfiguration eventually wears off. (If someone has ingested Transfigured food or inhaled Transfigured gas or smoke, and then the Transfiguration ends, the person now has chunks of the original medium floating around inside their bloodstream.) "

[@paolathomas4568]

I was near to having a breakdown figuring out weight painting in Maya as tutorials I found just didn't make any sense to me - so a massive thank you for this tutorial! It's helped me in an earlier school assignment and is proving so useful once again for another assignment! Thank you again!

[@doko3000]

The only video on the subject, it seems. This makes it pretty rare. Thanks for sharing!

[@Tea_Miser]

I'm not going to lie, this is probably the most useful painting tutorial I've ever come across. Your video has basically helped save my grade, thank you so much for making this.

[@raol635]

To be honest with you. I've been looking for this tutorial since, like ages. No one has done it perfectly same as you did. Thank you so much. Bravo

[@JoeMendoza83]

THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH!!! You literally saved me hours, days, & weeks in painting weights. I've been on this for ever. Love your technique and will definitely use it from here on out. Keep it up.

[@kevdiat]

Oh.My.God. Where has this been all my life

[@everydaySupremacey]

That's awesome! The idea of working with only 2 joints at a time saves so much time and keeps weights very clean. Thank you! Sir, you gained a subscriber!

[@tankthomus]

Your little spiel at the beginning answered so many of my questions about joint influence. This tutorial has been extremely helpful, thanks for uploading!

[@cheezyneSSful]

You have no idea how happy I am you uploaded this video

[@amaryta]

Best skinning tutorial ever. I've been having a lot of struggles with skinning (I'm a newbie) and this tutorial got me crying of happiness 😭❤️

[@Jaro3Me]

Dude thank you so much for this, just seeing your workflow I've learned so much in terms of how the locking joints works as well as the technique of smoothing out transitions.

[@pedro2696]

first time i see a video that actually does skinning right! Keep it going

[@JoHnWxNoW98]

Just came back on this because this is the best and easiest tutorial about skinning over here

[@saltyskegg5355]

This might be the only tutorial that explains the correct way to do this, thank you sir.

[@wadalapichu4873]

thanks a lot for this!, in a workshop i took some months ago a guy told us about this method, the only thing that i wish i knew its that its way better do the clavicles first and then the spine, im going to start doing it that way thanks to you!

[@BrentGe0rge]

I just happened upon this tutorial while looking for some references for some students. This content awesome :) I especially appreciated the intro tutorial, where you cover the high level logic of "weight normalization". Cheers!

[@ranjanimurugesan3832]

OMG!!! best weight pairing tutorial eveerrrrr!!!!!!! THANK YOU SOOO MUCHH!!

[@vanitameghrajani9089]

Thank you so much for the easiest tutorial I've found until now! 👍👍

[@TidusSZ]

You make my day!! I'm new skinning and your method really improve the process. Thank you for sharing your process!!!

[@Exsulator2]

3:33 I notice that the leg`s influence is surprisingly far down. I`d love a video on which verts to paint, and how to wrap your head around it. Also like you mentioned, a bone tutorial would be very nice! (if you find the time)

[@vaberyu]

This is AMAZING. You are a gift, sir.

[@7ruthVVizard]

I started with your video and I finished my character in 2 days :D

[@AvantAveGarde]

Haha, I learned the first few minutes by trial and error many times. Good on you for covering it!

[@spairkly]

I know I'm lke 4 years late but what were the buttons you were pressing at 5:45 to increase the selection??

[@DanArata]

Shit + > and Shift + < to grow and reduce!

[@rKringtonezone]

Really useful and stright to the point.

[@Exsulator2]

Thanks so much, this was exactly what I needed

[@amac333]

excellent short form videos, great info. thanks a million.

[@sivapandianreffreference]

wow Amazing clarity

[@kysudien]

Thank you so much. I hope you comback make many guide videos.

[@RawpowerGroudon]

This is actually simpler. Thanks for the tutorial.

[@mshumway78]

Thank you so much for such a clear demo!

[@laurentiutoader7919]

I am still new at this, so I apologise in advance if this is a dumb question: How do you manage to select the vertices without selecting the skeleton?

[@DanArata]

Not a dumb question at all. I try to avoid click dragging to select vertices since the joint will always be selected due to some sort of priority system. So what I usually do is select the loops of faces or edges, then hit shift+> to grow that selection. Then I will convert my selection to vertices by holding ctrl+right click and selecting to vertices>to vertices.

[@DanArata]

Ah I just noticed at 2:29 i did do a click drag. What I did there was hide my joints. I have a script/hotkey to toggle the visibility of my joints. But to do this manually, in the viewport menu it's under show/joints

[@laurentiutoader7919]

Dan, you’re amazing! Thank you so much!!!

[@lawrencelawine9082]

@@DanArata and how did you select the missing verts of the head while not deselecting the verts that are already selected?

[@DanArata]

@@lawrencelawine9082 ctrl+shift to click drag will only add to your selection, not remove :)

[@Omar.bin.khattab]

perfect method ... thanks for your time dan

[@NicoMahlerCG]

That was Quick.. thanks man!

[@jetty211]

Great Workflow. There is just one thing bugging me, how did you select the spines and rotated just one and all rotated proportionally @ 9:57

[@DanArata]

Ah, I'm actually selecting three of them there. So all three of the selected joints are rotating at the same time giving it that nice curling effect.

[@쿼드러플-s4m]

you so good at it

[@homestudioproduction2076]

Really good, You blew me away

[@fangyechannel]

This is a very smart way to make a clean skin weight, thanks for sharing, btw do you have any tips about "help joint" for shoulder/belly/ elbow? thanks.

[@DanArata]

I'm not really a fan of helper joints for elbows/knees. But for spines the more joints you can get the better, after a certain point. For elbows/knees I'll use a corrective blendshape so I can art direct the pose 100%. IMO skinning weights is only half the battle.

[@fangyechannel]

thanks for the reply, previously my main rigging content was more for TV commercial which use blendshape is fine, but now moving to game real-time and it limits to use joint only, it is kind of pain point.

[@fangyechannel]

OK，anyway thanks for the reply and this tutorial sharing again :)

[@bhoototiger3366]

thanks bro that harry porter example was damn good

[@harganator8515]

Thank you for this method! I was struggling to get my head around weight painting at first. However, if this method is basically starting from scratch and painting the entire weights yourself, it begs the question what is the point of an automatic bind in the first place? Is there no way I can use some of what the automatic bind gave me? For my model most of it needs painted manually but the bind actually did a good job on the hands, so it's kinda annoying that I'm going to have to go them again manually.

[@DanArata]

Thanks for your feedback. Generally yes, I have noticed most studios start the weights from scratch just so that they're sure of what values are going where. This is just preference though, of course. If you like what the bind did with your hands, you could lock off the hands and adjust between the other joints.

[@DanArata]

I will admit that sometimes I get something really good out of the bind but will have problems with the fingers. Say fingerA's joint is moving some of the verts in fingerB. In this case I'll just paint off what I don't need.

[@dennissabrievski4543]

as an animator I've lost my brain cells to understand this

[@Novecento]

I'm a beginner in rigging and weight painting and this is the best weight painting tutorial I've ever seen! Thank you so much sir! I have a question. I see the spine and the pelvis are not parented but graphically it's like they are parented. Are they parented in some strange way I still don't know or simply the spineA bone position is just snapped onto the pelvis bone position?

[@DanArata]

Hi, I'm glad it was of help! You are right, the spine and pelvis are not parented or related to one another. Each are the base of their own hierarchy and they just share the same position in space. I've since stopped setting up skeletons this way. It's fine if you're rigging for film or commercial work, but to get a skeleton working in a real-time engine (which I'm trying to get more into) you'll need just one joint chain. It also makes exporting/importing animation data on a skeleton easier. Hope that helps!

[@Novecento]

@@DanArata Thanks a lot for your answer! I'm learning on a single joint chain because I want to use the character inside the Unity engine (I'm technical artist programming shaders for Unity) so I've parented the spine to the pelvis but your method still works perfectly! Thanks again!

[@danpym3D]

Would you share your Bind options?

[@blairzettl3933]

Life saver. Thanks!

[@janilsonlima]

Amazing! Thansk for the tutorial!

[@Drew-bq8po]

So here's a dumb question for sure. Where you have your root joint, are there three that are overlapping each other. It would appear you have a starting joint for the spine, another one for the pelvis and a third which is the root. Is that correct?

[@Mikkola101]

you are my angle.

[@yearwhiteturtle]

well done good video

[@programthis3805]

how do u convert ur mesh to perfect quads to prepare it for weight painting?

[@lenneth1188]

how do u grow selection, shift + arrow doesn't work

[@MrCleetSR388]

lol omg yes I think I understand it so much more now thank you I been trying to do it like the 2014 essentails book says to and ripping my hair out for 5 days to now see I've been doing this all backwards. I posting this vid for my class!

[@crimsonBen]

i already lost the path when you paint the preselected vertex, i just cant to get it working x-S

[@ivangamer8022]

bro!! that's awesome

[@RakeshKumar-bs7ih]

Great👍

[@samrichardsonvfx]

Amazing!!

[@shraddhasindhe2282]

I dont know where I went wrong- my IK and FK controls are'nt sticking to the mesh after I've skinned the model. Does anyone know what I can do? I must have gone wrong somewhere with the Outliner

[@FrozenAura1982]

I have a problem when I change the Normalize weights option to interactive. It SERIOUSLY distorts the character mesh. Only with the Post option dies the mesh stay as it should. What can I do to remove this unwanted, excessive distortion while using the Interactive option? Thanks in advance,

[@DanArata]

That can happen if you've already done work in Post. Post won't normalize your weights, so it's possible that you have values above 1.0 which Interactive won't know how to deal with. Try running "Enable Weight Normalization" or "Normalize Weights" under Skin/Normalize Weights. If that doesn't work you can try "Prune Skin Weights" as a last resort in Skin/Prune Skin Weights. If all else fails, you could just continue to work in Post but you'll just have to keep in mind that the normalization mode is different.

[@DanArata]

I never work with Post so I don't have any tips on that, but this is from Maya's site "Post normalization leaves the weights the user has set as is, and only normalizes the weights at the moment it is needed (by dividing by the sum of the weights)." Cheers

[@Cuentasnode]

Thanks

[@arianchamp180]

Thanks sir

[@KiranKumar-xq7xg]

Thank you for such a great tutorial, I am getting an error (// Warning: Specified weight could not be set due to locked influences.) some places Mainly Between Head and Jaw, and between fingers.

[@rauldsilva]

You need to unlock the joint that has influence in the area.

[@hankookofthewest]

you make it look so easy lol

[@siddarthrock]

Thanks brother

[@janspaperheart]

awesome

[@khaotixy]

This is not working, when I flood it just disappears after I leave the menu and come back

[@chuckyellow1054]

did you lock your unused joints?

[@jagotato]

Suscribed!!. you are a god.

[@mawcreatives5150]

wow amazing can u make this tutorial little bit slow

[@YTV78150]

cool ! thanks

[@mrlgzltn7469]

after delete by types these fixing are going?

[@sCenermOnz]

Thx

[@prasannamanna8222]

Nice... Having a hard time doing it

[@tawantae]

I still wanna watch everything you have to say about joint placement

[@garbageday]

I like this method better than ngskintools. It makes things more confusing to me for some reason.

[@FFG8G]

It's a little fast for a beginner.

[@AmatyaMohit]

iloveyou.

[@2009BradJames]

im sorry cant understand anything you need to explain properly for the beginners

[@MrCleetSR388]

This has been the easiest video for me to understand on the subject lol

[@Exsulator2]

My thought exactly. I somehow wonder if there are better ways to do it still, but oh well, time will tell.

[@JiReyAnimation]

Rigging and skinning is certainly the last thing you wanna start with as a beginner because they're some of the hardest to master. This has been the easiest tutorial on skin weights I've seen so far. So I suggest you learn a few things about modeling and how to set up the rig joints first, and then come back to this video. :)

[@retroeshop1681]

I mean,. with all due respect, looks cool and all, but more than a tutorial, I'm just looking at you doing your thing, and hopefully get something of what you're doing :(