I put bones in...now what?

# 1 30-09-2006 , 04:06 PM

Registered User
Join Date: Sep 2006

Posts: 26

Ok...so i put bones in a dog... but i cant figure out how to actually get the bones to move the parts of the dog. I dont even know what to search for in a tutorial. All I find is just how to put them in.

Quote

# 2 30-09-2006 , 04:15 PM

Subscriber
Join Date: May 2005

Posts: 23

I think you have to now bind the skin.

I think I selected the skin first, then the bone structure. When they are both selected, if I'm not mistaken choose Animation from the drop down menu, then go to Skin -> bind skin -> Smooth Bind.

However, some other members may be able to shed a lot more light on this and be of better assistance.

I had to do this for a Gorilla project I did, I'll try and find some images and post em up. After you bind the skin, you might have to mess around with the painted weights tool, but there are a few tutorials here that will explain how to do it.

Hope this helps.

Last edited by Keith160377; 30-09-2006 at 04:22 PM.

Quote

# 3 30-09-2006 , 07:32 PM

Subscriber
Join Date: Jun 2003

Location: stuck in the 90's boston, USA

Posts: 1,871

actually go to nowhat.com

:p

couldnt resist that one.

u can press F1 nice tuts in the docs and tons online.

Image dump

Quote

# 4 01-10-2006 , 08:10 AM

Subscriber
Join Date: Sep 2006

Posts: 49

After Placing bones, you'll have to bind the skin(the dog) to the bones. You'll have to adjust the weights, these control how much influence each joint has on the mesh by painting in its intensity that it has on an area. this is very cool, because Maya lets you use a brush with varying phases of softness to paint your influences. Its one of my favorite parts of animation. This part can get very complicated pretty fast, but for what your doing, your probably just going to switch to animation mode>skin>bind skin> smooth bind. As far as you setting go, I use bind to selected joints for starters, leave the rest as is, but you can play with the settings here and see what works how. To paint weights, you'll want to go to..skin>edit smooth skin>paint skin weights tool. Theres alot of room for experimentation here. The idea is to paint on the influences and fade them to less influences, and move the model alittle to see how the skin deforms. You can adjust the weight a joint has on the skin which in turns, adjusts how it deforms. Its alot of trial and error and, you'll see if your model needs any more work. Play with it, and have fun! Hope this is alittle help.. I'm a newbie so I'm learning as well. user added image

Quote

# 5 01-10-2006 , 10:33 AM

Registered User
Join Date: Sep 2006

Posts: 26

Thank you all so much! What would be a good tutorial or book on this?

Last edited by kerragan; 01-10-2006 at 11:12 AM.

Quote

# 6 01-10-2006 , 03:27 PM

Subscriber
Join Date: Sep 2006

Posts: 49

amazon

Heres a link to Amazon.com, they have many books for Maya. One that was great for beginners was " Game Character Development for Maya" I'm not really into game development, but it was a good beginners book to learn modelling tools as well as beginnings of rigging, texture mapping, and rendering. Best thing was, it starts off assuming you dont know much about Maya, and tells you how to set up your first project, and the tools you are using, and how to use them. Then it starts later trying to see if you can do similar tasks on your own. Most of the books come with a CD ROM, this one did, and in case you get stuck, you can open the authors models in various stages and see whats what, or even use the model itself to keep working ahead. All books tend you leave something out, or get alittle vague here or there, but thats to be expected, since they could have be written on one version of Maya, and yours is a later one. ( it comes with the learning edition of Maya) So, there will be times when you'll have to try to work through it, or like me.. ask many questions here. And, try to look at any and all tuts you can find, I almost find at least one or two things in almost every tutorial that will come in handy. The free tuts here are very cool, and there are many sites with free video tuts as well. Have fun, take your time, and the more you do it, the more you'll learn. Cheers! user added image

Quote

I put bones in...now what?

Posting Rules Forum Rules

Similar Threads

Topics

Free Courses

Full Courses

VFX News