Weight Painting newbie question - Maya

martin242

I'm learning the weight painting tool in Maya and already been able to paint decent weights on simple meshes, but now I want to paint weights on some detailed military boots with a lot of different overlapping parts like metal eyelets, laces, zippers and I'm really having a hard time figuring the best way to do it. It's a pain trying to use the camera to paint on those overlapping stuff part by part. Is there a different way to do it? What would be the fastest approach to something like that? Thanks

antweiler

Get used to use copy skinweights, its extremely useful. In the case of overlapping stuff, do your weightpainting on a clean proxy mesh, and copy the weights to the complicated mesh. Do the refinement on the proxy and copy weights again.

martin242

Thanks antweiler! I know how to copy skinweights. What is the best practice to create a good proxy mesh? Should it be like a single mesh with overall shape? Like putting the shoe in a tight bag? What about geometry? Does it need to match the geo of the complex item?