Painting skin weights in Maya

[@cancellierr]

Thanks for sharing your knowledge! Very helpful for a beginner in the rigging world.

[@JasonNewkirkArt]

Hi Iker! Thanks for sharing! I weight pretty much the same way you have shown, but I didnt know much about the scale thing! Great example of it's use! Cheers to you!

[@ikerclon]

Thanks, Jason! I use Scale with values greater than 1 all the time. It's really useful to keep the current deformations you have, and add influence from a joint without destroying the weights relationship you've already established.

[@nanayawbriefo]

Thanks for sharing this knowledge on the basics of skinning. I have been using the same procedure and never used the gradient. Which is powerful, letting you see the other few influences. Also, I never used the scale option which you made easier on how to use it with the smooth parameter. Thank you again this is really helpful!

[@ikerclon]

I believe Autodesk added that gradient thing not that long ago, probably brought the idea from 3DSMAX. I used MAX for years, and seeing colors in other than black and white is really useful!

[@ligush211]

it's incredible!

[@LevchukAnton]

Thank you sir, you save my life!

[@ikerclon]

Glad to hear that!

[@LuKcYTuToRiAlS]

Very Basic but incredibly powerful knowledge, like a jab in boxing! Thanks for the video Iker, I'll share it on some rigging hubs!

[@ikerclon]

Thanks a lot, Alberto! These introductions are always thought specially for people that are not into rigging. A lot of artist friends see rigging as some dark wizardry, but with some basic rules they could too articulate their characters with ease.

[@LuKcYTuToRiAlS]

@@ikerclon I mean.....you can eventually turn it into black wizardry....but the basics are pretty easy to get into!

[@anasElkinawy]

This Is A Really Nice Explanation I Loved It If By Any Chance There Is A Way To Keep Posting About How To Get Nice Deformation It Will Be Great ^^

[@lawrence9713]

I really don't like Mayas default skinning settings. Mixamo for example does such a goood job on that. It's far from perfect, but waay better than Maya. Really good explanation. I'd say the best and only skin weight tutorial you need. Only problem I have with the finger example, if you bend your finger like this, there is ne free space inbetween

[@ikerclon]

Thanks! You have 4 different algorithms to get your default skin weights. I used Heat Map in the past with not too bad results. Geodesic Voxel should give you more accurate results, but it will all depend on your skeleton, your mesh and its volumes. I am pretty sure Mixamo uses something similar to create the weights.

[@workflowinmind]

Iker

[@workflowinmind]

Where did your hair go ?

[@ikerclon]

@@workflowinmind Life happened :_D