[Maya] - Skin weight values on Fingers

Elie

Hey everybody. These days I've got to skin faster a lot of hands. Someone sweared to me that there are some values in the component editor that could be always the same. So I wouldn't have to redo everything. I have one joint for the hand, and 4 joints for each finger. Someone here knows about that? Again, thanks for your help and sharing.

Alex_J

What do you mean "redo everything?"

Not a rigging expert but maybe you are doing something inefficiently I may know about.

Mark Dygert

If you have a lot of meshes to skin, onto the same rig, skin one really well usually a base mesh and then after you bind the other meshes, copy the weights from the base mesh.

I do that anytime we have new gear, armor or clothing that needs to go on character. 

Elie

Thanks a lot for your answer. Alex by "redo everything" I mean joint placement and paint skin weight from scratch for every new mesh. Mark I try to use the copy skin weight, but depending on the objects, I have incorrect results sometimes. For exemple, every new hand is not exactly like the others... I speak about size, orientation of the fingers etc. So I thought the secret was all about entering the same values in the component editor, but I didn't find anything on the subject yet. Thanks again for sharing your experience!  

throttlekitty

Elie said:

Thanks a lot for your answer. Alex by "redo everything" I mean joint placement and paint skin weight from scratch for every new mesh. Mark I try to use the copy skin weight, but depending on the objects, I have incorrect results sometimes. For exemple, every new hand is not exactly like the others... I speak about size, orientation of the fingers etc. So I thought the secret was all about entering the same values in the component editor, but I didn't find anything on the subject yet. Thanks again for sharing your experience!  

If possible, make an alternate UV map on such objects that matches the layout of the source object. Copy Skin Weights can use this to transfer instead of position in the world, but it's up to you if it's worth the time.

Elie

thanks a lot throttlekitty, I'll give it a try. For now I switch from skin to other tasks