Weight Painting
I have yet to meet somebody who actually enjoys weight painting. It is an essential part of skinning your character however, so here are some pointers. You may also want to look at Maya 2019 Help → Character Animation → Skinning your character → Smooth Skinning
The brush Radius for all Artisan Paint tools can be set interactively, by dragging with the Left mouse button pressed while holding:
- b - Sets the Upper Brush Radius (U)
- B (shift-b) - Sets the Lower Brush Radius (L)
One thing that cannot be overstated is: GIVE YOUR BONES CLEAR AND APPROPRIATE NAMES!
Weight Painting Tips
- Only mirror weights when the model is in bind pose (or at least in a symmetrical pose) as the current vertex positions are used.
- When using the newer (and preferred) method Normalize Weights > Post the weight you take away from a vertex does not automatically get assigned to other vertices as the sum of all weights no longer needs to equal one. However, points may end up with no weight at all or with a total weight far exceeding 1.
- A combined weight of zero (no bones influence that vertex) will make the point 'collapse' into the origin (move to 0,0,0). To get it out of there you need to give it some weight for at least one joint.
- A combined of over one will simply divide the influences of all joints by that total when deforming the mesh. This means that assigning a weight of 1 to a vertex for a specific joint does not mean that that vertex will no longer be influenced by other joint (as is the case when the weights are interactively normalized)
- If you want to paint the old fashioned way, using Interactive Weight Normalization
- In the paint tools, set Normalize Weights to Interactive
- It is advisable to paint in add or replace mode. If you subtract weight from a vertex, it is unpredictable where that weight might end up. Flooding with a value other than one also has unpredictable results
- Be patient when using Animation > Skin > Edit Smooth Skin > Smooth Skin Weights as it may take a while, in the mean time Maya will be unresponsive. Since undoing that operation will take just as long, it is advisable to save before you smooth.
Enhanced Skinning Workflow 2011
In Maya 2011 a number of new features were introduced, here is the video explaining the changes that were made to the skinning workflow. Note that the more advanced skinning methods that have been added since, like heatmap, get you a good result a lot quicker than interactive skinbind.
- If a vertex or entire parts of the geometry collapse into the origin, those vertices are not contained in any of the interactive bind volumes and therefore are assigned a total weight value of zero.
- Adjust the volumes so all points are enclosed.
- If you switch back to interactive skin bind after painting weights, you will loose all the paint work
Tutorials - pre-2011 Maya
Pre-2011 all weight painting was done in intercative mode (see "If you want to paint the old fashioned way"above)
From the Maya index on this site, there is a page linked for character set up that also includes a weight painting page.