Skinning

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- Name all your joints properly.- Check your IK handles, do the joints move in the correct direction? If not do the joints need to be adjusted for correct IK movement?- Add blend shapes to the mesh. If the blend shapes are not ready add a null blend shape as a place marker.- When using smooth and interactive skinning techniques lower the max influences to 2, this helps decrease the amount of overlapping skin influence issues that can occur.

During skinning-Keep in mind that it might take more than one joint to reach a pose. For example, a raised arm (Abduction and Adduction)needs both the scapula and the arm joints for proper locomotion or the radius and wrist joints for proper Pronation and Supi-nation movement.- Look out for rubbery joint bends in the knee, elbow and wrist. It is better to have sharp bends than rubber bends.-For hard to get at vertexes use the windows>general editors>component editor for exact skin weight control.-Animate key poses for each set of joints before you start adjusting skin weights. This will speed up the skinning process by avoiding the need to move from rotation to skin adjusting modes. Start by keying in the 0,0,0 rotate positions at the first frame on the timeline. Move forward to the 5th frame in the timeline; key in the de-sired position. Move forward to the 10th frame in the timeline; key in the desired position. Repeat as needed.

1. Animate the scapula and shoulder to raised and lowered position. 2. Animate the spine (back1Jnt, back2Jnt, back3Jnt) forward to backward and side to side (like a stretching exercise).3. Animate the footCtl to raised and lower position.4. Animate the neck and head forward to backward and side to side.5. Animate the wrist in Flexion and Extension positions.6. Animate every other finger in Flexion and Extension positions. This allows you to see if the finger skin weights are overlapping which is a common problem.

After skinning-Always test your rig and skin for any skin or rig problems.

Recommended Defaults

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