Folks,

No matter HOW careful/knowlegeable one (thinks one) is, one needs to consistently pay attention to the LITTLE things in Maya we all take for granted...like SAVING FREQUENTLY AND IN ITERATIONS, FREEZING TRANSFORMATIONS and DELETING HISTORY!

I had JUST FINISHED several hours of weight painting (we ALL love that, right?!) when I pulled back and realized my character's entire upper body was deformed...REALLY deformed! I traced it all back to a global control object (a simple NURBS circle) I created for the character.

I FORGOT to freeze the transformations and delete the history, and as a result totally screwed up the bind pose!

The problem was easily fixed, of course, but not before I had to detach all of the skin, losing all my meticulous painted weights! :-) GRRRR!

Yes, I realize occasionally the simplest mistakes happen to all of us periodically despite our best efforts, but I hope this reminder will help. In our haste to finish a character after rigging it, we may forget something small like freezing transformations or deleting history. The damage down the road can be exponential!

We are all admonished to save frequently, but we should also thoroughly check our work before instinctly just saving it! Had I checked, I would have seen the deformed upper body on my character and could have pressed "UNDO" until I discovered the source of the problem.

If there's any good news to all of this, it is that we often learn from our frustration. I have been able to improve on things I didn't realize needed improvement until after the fact. All well and good as long as there isn't a deadline involved!

Just something to think about! Have a nice day! :-)