But if you need more then maybe it’s time to consider having a dedicated blendShape deformer much the same way with facial rigs. In most cases you don’t need more than 4 joint influence for a vertex. #Maya geometry x painting weights skinYou can set the Maximum Joint Influence under skinCluster Node > Smooth Skin Attributes > Maintain Max Influences. In perspective, if you change from 4 to 5 joint influence you are not necessarily increasing the overhead by 25% but probably making it twice as complex as before since it’s will be harder to maintain and debug. However it’s actually a good workflow for every type of production. The maximum joint influence is a known requirement for game character rigs. Image source Keep Maximum Joint Influence to a Minimum Now let’s discuss the actual skinning workflows. Until then, accommodate mistakes on your schedule. In time you’ll develop a shorthand memory of what works and what doesn’t. This makes it an iterative process, and I am here to tell you that it’s totally normal. #Maya geometry x painting weights trialThe way around this conundrum is trial by fire.ĭelete skinning. This is why you’ll see the spine joints of character to be almost straight with little to no curves. An anatomical spine forms a somewhat S-shape but if you follow this pattern with a 3D character, you’ll end up with a limited range of motion since a joint will already be biased to another side. To make matters worse, real-life anatomy joint placement doesn’t translate one to one to rigging.Ī classic example is a spine. And you can’t get good skinning if the joint placement is lackluster. You can’t determine what’s a good joint placement if you don’t have the skinning. Or if you forget to delete history nodes, you’ll soon realize that your rig is playing below real-time frame rate as Maya will calculate existing nodes for every frame.Īnother important prerequisite is the joint placement, but this is a Catch-22. You have the option to paint through view but this also includes painting the other side of the mesh. The problem comes in later when you are trying to fine-tune or correct some weights.įor example, having overlapping two vertices means you have to paint twice. Technically you can still skin and eventually animate your character without mesh clean-up. Be sure to perform mesh cleanup such as removing unnecessary vertices, merging overlapping vertices, observing proper topology, deleting history nodes and maintaining symmetry on symmetrical characters. Like any other pipeline process, skinning is highly dependent on its inputs. #Maya geometry x painting weights how toSo with that said, let’s cover some tips and tricks on how to prevent potential issues, speed up your workflow, and troubleshoot skinning problems. This makes skinning an essential skill for any 3D artist. Some algorithms can come close but no character rigs have been shipped into production without artist intervention. It also serves as the first defense for proper deformation and a deciding factor on how much time to dedicate to other deformation.Īlong with the joint placement, skinning has a special place in the pipeline as it can’t be fully automated. In other words, without skinning, you can’t animate your character. Specifically skinning involves assigning each vertex of a model to one or several joints. Generally, skinning is the process of attaching your model to the joints, and incidentally, to the controls. The rigging phase mostly consists of placing joints, skinning, and building controls. But let’s start with a brief introduction… What is Skinning?Īfter modeling your character you need to rig your geometry before you can start the animation phase. Here are some tips to get you started on the process of skinning, specifically with Maya(although tips can apply to mostly any software). That said, some help along the way is always great. The process is very technical but practice always makes perfect. If you’re getting into 3D character projects then you’ll need to work through skinning at some point. That means if you buy something we get a small commission at no extra cost to you( learn more) Tips 3D Written by Ben Traje Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links.
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