actually, why dont you just create a bone for each vertex you want to control and skin the vertex to that joint, and that should give you the same behaviour.
Yeah, this is what I do. It can help to bake a vertex curvature map, which can show you at a glance the importance of a given vertex to the overall form.
for vertex color interpolation (depending on the lighting used) the center vertex wheels are actually better, with the parallel lines more lighting artefacts will occur when wheels are rolling
Maybe try using vertex offset in the material and vertex paint it the displacement around some the geo to smooth out the sand transition. Looking really nice otherwise. Keep going!
Yes, in Max. But I not change UV-s, only connect 2 vertex, and remove 1 vertex, and a the projection go to default. Now i try to import-export projection.
If you understand what the cage does (the baker fires rays inwards towards the model, from cage vertex to model vertex) then you'll see why scaling is a bad idea.
Merge all the bottom vertices into the corner vertex. Don't need those extra bottom verts, waste. Same with the side vertex near the top, weld it to the top corner instead.
This usually means the vertex is weighted to no other bones. If you check the Normalize checkbox, then when you weight that vertex 1.0 (100%) to another bone, the current weight will drop to 0.0.
Not sure what I am looking for in the face / vertex normals. Face normals are at a 90* angle, and vertex normals seem to flow with the angle of the edge where faces meet.