Copy skin weights, Maya

Jay Evans

anyone have a good script for copying skin weights based on the vertex world space position? One that is UVW independent. I need one for maya 4.5 to save me from weeks of weighting very similar meshes with different UV's

Snowfly

http://www.stannogen.org/Scripts/Scripts.htm

malcolm

I think you can do this by saving out a weight map as a .tga and applying it to all your models. You should ask WarGhoul as he knows everything when it comes to Maya weighting.

Jeff Parrott

I think 4.5 has the Mirror Skin Weights in Edit Smooth Skin menu. You should try that. Works great when you have one side weighted. Although I get some errors in the hands area when I use it.

Jay Evans

Malcolm: I think.. although I'm not a 100%maya pro, that the weight maps you export are based on your models UV's therefore they are not much use for moving weights from one model to another.
Snowfly: that script sounds perfect, but of course I'm having some problems getting it to work. I'll play around with it more and see if I can figure it out.

Asthane

[ QUOTE ]
Malcolm: I think.. although I'm not a 100%maya pro, that the weight maps you export are based on your models UV's therefore they are not much use for moving weights from one model to another.

[/ QUOTE ]

They are. I don't think he really read your post

I use the script Snowfly posted and it works great, though your problem could be that you're on 4.5 and it's only been tested with 5+. What sort of problems are you getting? Depending on the complexity of the model, it can take quite a while to save/import the data. Try leaving it for a while if your problem is that it seems to freeze Maya (Just a guess)

Whargoul

Doesn't Maya built-in copy skin weights do it exactly how you want? Have your source mesh bound to the skeleton, bind your target mesh to the same skeleton (or I think a duplicate works just as well) and use the copy skin weights tool. It's extremely fast as works by vertex proximity, and bone proximity.

Jay Evans

ya, the only problem is that I have to have the characters in seperate files, and as far as I know copy skin weights dosent work between files. But I'll try exporting weightmaps. Importing the mesh into my other files, applying the weight maps, then using copy weights.

As far as my problem with the Script snowfly posted is the following. Im trying to take weights from a file a co-worker did. If Im just using my files, it works great. On his it seems to choke before it even exports with the naming on the skin clusters.

I think the problems I'm having are compounded by the fact I'm using a skelaton that has been referenced into my file. When I reference it in, it gets different prefixes on the whole skelaton and all my bones end up with differnt names.

You guys have given me lots to try so I'm sure there is a solution in here somewhere, just need to play around more. Thanks

Jay Evans

well after working with it all day, finally got the results I was looking for. I took the time and weighted one of my meshes, just visually referencing the painted weights of the mesh I was trying to copy. Then used the script Snowfly posted to copy those weights to my other characters. Works great BTW. Also thanks Whargoul for the reminder about copy weights, it made short work of my LODs. Ain't Polycount great thanks guys