Into to Skinning:

• The word skinning means to bind a piece of geometry to a series of Maya joints. In this case the
image below represents a polygon mesh with a single vertex at the bottom, alternatively this can be
used to connect a nurbs mesh as well to a series of joints.
• That is connected by a skin cluster node which store a series of influences onto a single point on that
mesh. Eg: a single vertex

Method 1: Interactive Weight Normalisation:

• In this example, it show one method of skinning. normalisation.
• Normalisation - means maximum value of 1 or 100% so joint point to one vertex must add up to 1 or
100% (seen below with the values below the joints equalling 1). In this case there is three joints so
that is a max influences of 3, meaning youre allowing three joints to connect to one vertex.
• Weights are the values seen below the joints, they are the weights or distribution of values to that
single vertex.
• An interactive is a away of saying that these values have been calculated to a value of one before we
actually move the mesh around, eg rotated joints.
Method 2: Post Weight Normalization (No Total Weight Cap).
• Slightly different to method 1, same sort of process where you are connect 3 joints to a single
vertex except in a post weight there is not weight capping going on meaning there is not
value of one; you can go above the values of one.
• Post means that when we move our model around the weighting will be converted to a 0 to 1
range.

Diagram below:
• Shows the joints distribute slightly differently in terms of their weight, values all varying and
going over that value of one. But Maya knows to convert these values when the mesh is
moved/ rotated converting it to a 0 to 1 range. So the normalization of joint equaling 1
happens after the joint have be altered instead of before.
• Paint Weight: using the artisan brush and actually paint the weights
• Component Editor: allows you to type in numerical values to edit the weights.
• Interactive Bind (Capsules): used at the beginning of the process to allow these capsules to
wrap around the geometry and try too help distribute those weights when the mesh is bind
initially.

• There are also rules with each method as seen below on the right.
• The initial bind is the first step in the skinning process. That is where you select the joints
and the mesh and then connect them. Is done in the default there tends to be quite a lot
of mistakes so this would have to be redone in order for the skinning to be done correctly.

• Bind rules seen below:

Jump to 9:20
 Made mesh shell Skinning Method 1: Interactive Weighting,
unsmoothed. Component Editor & Paint Weights.

• Where weight values add up to a value of 1 or

100%.

Then selected rig joints

and then arm mesh.

From there I then when to skin in the rigging

menu and then went to the bind skin options,
from there I then hit apply.
Initial bind is okay, but there are some irregularities that need fixing and cleaning up.

Held down Control and Shift to place operations onto the newly formed skinning shelf.

Then disabled joints so that when I am selecting the mesh I am not selecting
the joints as well.
Component editor is another way to view all vertices positions and the name of the joints and all
the different weighting we have on those joints. Weights at the moment are all over the place
due to the initial bind, meaning the weights at their current positon are being distributed very
poorly.
 Clean up using Paint weights.
Can either using the black and white to show
placement of the weight (black 0, white 1), or you can
use the ramp (red 1, blue 0) to show weight
placement.
To clean up, use the flood setting by selecting the
shoulder joint, making sure the opacity and value are
set to 1 and then hit flood. Shoulder joint is now
linked up with the meshes vertices. However by doing
so the rest of the joints have been disconnected from
the mesh meaning these will have to be reattached.
From there I then selected the vertices for the forearm and flooded the selection to link the
elbow joint to the forearm vertices.
I then proceed to do the same for
the fingers, linking up the
corresponding vertices to the
joints in the fingers, making sure
to select the correct joint in the
menu above the flood settings.

Repeat on all fingers,

Rig now all connected up to the mesh, at this stage
the connections act as a foundation to the be
refined by blending the weight together.
 Blending Weights Together Using the Component
Editor.

• Turned on wire fame on shaded.

• Using the add method, as this is the interactive
bind method; meaning it will come to a value of 1.
• So to blend, select the vertices over the joint and
one above the row to get pinky_01 and pinky_02
in the Component Editor. Then in the pinky_02
column select the 0 values and add a value of 0.5.
• Then repeated the process on the row of vertices
below the 0.5 row and used a lower value of 0.2
as the joint should be influencing the mesh less,
since it is getting further away.
• Then selected the lower pinky_02 vertices and
one vertex from pinky_01 and set in a value of 0.1
to bring a little more influence in from joint 2 in
the pinky finger.
 Painting the Weights.

• Set up some animation on the fingers to see the bend and the distortion in the mesh before and after rectification, since in the paint
weights tool you cant select joints to see the falloff from the joints rotation.
• From there I then set the value to 0.5 and selected pinky_03 and started to paint the joints to start blending the weight together. (to change
brush size hold B and drag to get desired brush size.) I then set the value to 0.1 and proceeded to paint the next set of vertices on pinky_03,
as this is being done I am adding to the influences in the joint to get a smoother movement of the mesh.
• Selected Pinky_02 joint value of 0.05 added the top row of vertices in pinky finger to further smooth movement.
Mesh over middle finger was pulling too much, so to rectify this I selected the wrist and set a value of 0.2 to
the start painting on the following row of vertices. I then upped it to 0.5 and found it wasn’t enough so then
upped it again to 0.8, from there I then halved the value to 0.4 and painted on the following set of vertices
on the pinky finger. I then did it one more time on the next row of vertices dropping down to a value of 0.05
to further refine the drop off if influences acting on the pinky finger.
• This process was then repeated on the next two fingers and thumb.
 Set the wrist values to 1 and
then select selected one
vertex on the pinky and set
the value to 0.1 on the
vertices that have a value of
0. Then moved to the other
side and repeated the process
and then deselected the
vertex on the middle finger,
from there I then selected the
looked at the value in the 3
columns and what I could do
to even up the weight
distribution, to do this I set
the wrist to 0.9, pinky_03 to
0.1 and middle_03 to 0.1
– As long as values are being added, weighting should be okay. Repeat again to the vertices between the index and middle.
Adjustment were also made to the thumb twist as well.
 I then proceed to adjust the weight on the
wrist and elbow fall off so that it didn’t appear
that the mess was breaking or distorting too
much when moved.
 Unsmoothed (1). Smoothed (3).

I then mirrored the painted weights across to the right arm. To do this I selected the right arm mesh and unsmoothed the
mesh and then proceeded by selecting the should joint and then the mesh and going up to the skin menu and selecting bind
skin. I then selected the left arm mesh with all weight history and then the right arm mesh and went to skin, mirror skin
weights options to make sure the right mirror axis is selected in this case YZ axis. Mesh as joints on the right arm now match
up with the left arm. Then put arms into smoothed mode and joint bends now move a lot nicer and smoother.
 Skinning Method 2: Post Weights &
Interactive Bind.

Select pelvis joint then leg mesh. From there go to skin > bind skin options and change
normalised weights from interactive to post, then apply to mesh and rig.

Post weighting allows you to go above a value of one

Select the mesh and left click till the pop-up menu shows and
go to paint skin weights tool. From there select the pelvis
joint and flood the joint with a value of one. This then adds
the pre-existing values already associated with the joint. This
however does not affect the other joints weighting a post
weights are additive and can go above one unlike interactive
weights that need to equal a value of one.
 • There needs to be a value of 1
somewhere on the model so then
information from other joint scan
be deleted.
• Set the ball joint to a value of zero
using subtraction; something that
couldn’t be done in interactive
weighting.
• Repeat for the rest of the joints
except for the pelvis joint.

• Then select vertices up to the

foot_ball joint and then go to the
paint weights and select the
foot_ball joint in the influences
menu and se the value to one and
the flood the joint.
• Through doing so it does not remove the values from the
pelvis weight. So to remove side weight keep vertices
selected and change value to zero and flood vertices in
the pelvis joint to become zero.
• Repeat for the remaining joints. Making sure to add first
then subtract so that there remains a value of one in any
one area.
Then selected the
ankle joint and
started the process
of blending
between the
weights (ankle and
ball of the foot). To
do this I used the
smooth (ankle) and
replace (foot ball)
options to alter the
mesh so that it
bends smoother
but still holds a bit
of rigidity when
bent.
I then repeated the process to the ankle
joint and the rest of the leg to smooth
the mesh between the joints.
 Post Weight Blend Results.

Front Side Back

 Interactive Bind.

• It’s a Post weight normalisation process.

• Capsules are a way of initially weighting the model on each of its
joints. These capsules can be moves around and scaled to give
influence in certain areas.
• Red represent a high value or a value of one and the blue
represent that of the low value or a value of 0 – bit like a heat
map, the further away from the heat source the cooler it gets.
• A way of initially weighting a mesh.
• If you click off the capsule by accident you only have to reselect the rig joint to get it back.
• Capsule weight can be mirrored across the initial bind and then cleaned up.
• Through the initial interact bind to the mesh the outcome is okay, but you will have to go
back a clean up and stray weighting on the mesh.
• Overall it is a way to speed up the initial bind and grouping process.

• With this I found I couldn’t get to the capsules to rotate accordingly or scale them in the
width/depth parameters, so I did the best I could with what it allowed me to do to get a feel
for the interactive bind process, if I was doing this on a full model and the capsules weren't
working accordingly I would resort to the grouping a blending process as done before with
the post weights and the interactive method learnt previously.