Trouble with the Paint Skin Weights Tool

# 1 17-06-2011 , 04:55 PM

Registered User
Join Date: Jun 2011

Posts: 4

Hello, everyone.

I'm working on a final college assignment in which I have to animate a character. I'm currently at what seems to be the hardest and most time consuming step, the skin weights painting part.
I'm trying to only make an arm move, without the long year and the vest, for example coming along. I've painted the weights of both things off already, but when I move to another part, if I come back to check on it, it's "dirty" again. I find myself visiting the areas I've already cleaned over and over again.

What can I do to stop this?
Many thanks for your replies.

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# 2 18-06-2011 , 11:09 PM

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Join Date: May 2003

Location: London

Posts: 1,001

firstly you should paint weight on clothing parts separately (or ideally simulate them with n-cloth). But to help with your issue, painting works as follows:
Each vertex must have an overall weight influence of 1.... so to explain if you have 3 joints having influence over a vertex.. their influences added up must equal to 1 or maya will automatically assign the remaining influence to a joint. e.g. this is why if when using the paint weights tool you set the option to replace and the value to 0 and remove all joint influence, maya will automatically reassign the weight influnce.

A clean way to go about painting weights is to select only the joints that you need to influence the mesh, then select the mesh, go to the smooth skin options and set the max influences to 1 and the joints to selected.
Bind the mesh and lock all the joints' weights in the paint weight tool. Then set your max influences up to 3 or however many joints you want and selectively unlock and smooth/ clean the results in different areas. Its tricky to paint weights without structuring your approach... treat each limb and joint individually and control the workflow.

FX supervisor - double negative

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# 3 04-12-2011 , 11:22 AM

Lifetime Member
Join Date: Feb 2010

Location: Australia

Posts: 4,255

Thanks Laurie...I was having trouble with that too,,,cheers man.

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bullet1968

"A Darkness at Sethanon", a book I aspire to model some of the charcters and scenes

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# 4 04-12-2011 , 12:50 PM

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Join Date: Feb 2010

Location: Australia

Posts: 4,255

I will ask Laurie or anyone.......when I am painting weights...sometimes the verts will spring down to the grid or miles away from the mesh...I assume this has something to do with my settings...I have bound my skin to heirachy...its for a human walk cycle and Im following a tut from here for this. If I do it to selected joints the whole model is painted...

cheers bullet

bullet1968

"A Darkness at Sethanon", a book I aspire to model some of the charcters and scenes

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# 5 01-11-2012 , 07:33 AM

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Join Date: Nov 2012

Posts: 1

FOR PEOPLE WHO GOT THE PROBLEM WITH PAINT WEIGHT THAT THE VERTICES MOVE TO 0,0,0

SELECT VERTICES THATS MOVE TO 0,0,0 AND CHOOSE
Animation>Skin>Edit Smooth Skin>Weight Hammer

THIS SHOULD SOLVE YOUR PROBLEM

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# 6 18-05-2016 , 06:59 PM

Registered User
Join Date: Apr 2015

Posts: 2

Hello!

Sorry to revive an old thread, but, Laurie, I can't get what you said to do, to work!! I'm trying to paint skin weights for some fingers, and the influence on one finger's joints keeps spilling over to the other fingers...sigh...I tried following your advice to adjust max influences, to selectively unlock joints, etc, but just can't get it. Could you help? I uploaded my maya file here if you'd like to take a look: https://yale.box.com/s/dlugtjwhzqw6rw50cyn1d0g78bejfog7

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Trouble with the Paint Skin Weights Tool

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