Hate painting weights? Of course you do: ngSkinTools

Makkon

I found something amazing today. It's like painting weights with layers, lets you organize your work, has AMAZING smoothing and tools, and speeds up the workflow. I just started trying it out, and I thought I'd share.

http://www.ngskintools.com/

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzMtHZbDnAY"]ngSkinTools demo - YouTube[/ame]

This plugin is for Maya, and is free. The author is accepting donations.

Torch

Anyone else clapped their hands and thrusted at the monitor when hearing the music? Cheers for the link dude, plugin looks great!

Makkon

Oh man this thing is easy to pick up! I've been at this for maybe 10 mins max, and I am actually ENJOYING painting weights! A few more minutes with the trapezoid area and I'm practically done with all the shoulder range on this test (to see if my topology was working (it is)).

Seriously, guys. Give this a try, it's absolutely amazing. I'm going to pass this around at work.

Malus

Nice find mate.
I actually love skinning @___@ but nothing wrong with a faster process. :P

oglu

in combination with the new voxel binding in maya 2015 its even faster...
http://vimeo.com/69268846

TAN

Man. Never realized how strong Maya was in rigging. Maybe I should also side step from Max to this.

Torch

TAN wrote: »

Man. Never realized how strong Maya was in rigging. Maybe I should also side step from Max to this.

That seems to be the general consensus about both apps - Max is awesome for modelling, Maya is king when it comes to rigging/animation, although not sure how much that applies these days...

PyrZern

That looks amazing. Gotta have to check this out now!
Thanks

katana

Amazing. Too bad there's no Max port over.

Makkon

You could always export an FBX, would that work? You'd have all the skinning you want, and you can assign all the new animation controls in Max.

katana

That's a thought. Thanks.

Clark Coots

I still think I hate painting skinweights haha. but seriously this does look really cool

ExcessiveZero

Haven't painted weights since I was doing animation in college I think it largely put me off animation and I seemed to be one of the best in the class at getting a rig with good weights going but the whole process is so tedious, might give it a go though as it looks rather intuitive

mazz423

Makkon, you are my hero, cheers for sharing this! First time I've actually enjoyed painting weights for about two years. Definitely making this a permanent addition to my go to plugins.

MartinKDahl

Brilliant tool. Big thanks to the talented person who made this and decided to put it up for free! I will have to donate a little bit. Thanks for sharing.

Kel-Shaded

Great share, cheers buddy

battlecow

been using it for some time, love it!

Matt Fagan

Massive thanks for this tool! I hope Autodesk would acquire you for work on the next Maya. Cheers!

Blond

Amazing!

For me binding is the most tedious part of the workflow when rigging a character.
This might be of help.

THX OP.

Dubzski

Very cool.
Not a Maya user as of yet however i plan on using it for Characters in the future.... so this is perfect! .

axl99

NG Skintools saved me hours of work when I had to do some super quick rigging and animation at the office. The skinweight mirroring is practically flawless.

jwfitt

Can anyone share a rough workflow for how you would approach a single mesh humanoid?

It seems like in his example video with just the shirt, he would put every joint encompassing the mesh on the base layer, flood the whole thing to 1, and then mirrors it.

In a full humanoid, single mesh would you add every single joint to the Base Layer, flood, and mirror it, and then build more region-specific layers on top of that with layers masks? Seems like on the shirt example he was even flooding the entire mesh to more specific layers and relying on the layer masks to define the regions.

Matt Fagan

@Makkon, will you be supporting Maya 2015 release soon?

Makkon

Jwfitt: no no no, don't flood! Aaah! Use the assign weights option in the tool, smooth everything, and then just work on joint by joint. That should do the trick.

Matt Fagan: I'm not the developer of the tool, just user and admirer of it. The developer I'm certain is working on a 2015 release, he's been keeping up with all the releases up to this point. You can contact him directly (info on his site) and ask him if you need to.

jwfitt

Thanks Makkon,

Do you utilize layers much then or just work on a single Base Layer?

Makkon

So far I've been using the base, but using layers helps to stay organized.