Rigging & Skinning

Key Learning Points

Avoid Unnecessary Rig Complexity

One of my key takeaways was not to overcomplicate the rig. I initially added more spine joints than necessary and implemented a two-stage tail rig, which significantly increased the complexity of the weight painting process. In future projects, I’ll aim to be more strategic and deliberate with bone placement to strike a balance between flexibility and manageability.

Weight Painting Is Time Consuming and Challenging

Although I had some prior experience, I underestimated how long and difficult weight painting could be especially with my character’s unique, stumpy proportions. The compact and rounded form added unexpected challenges when trying to achieve smooth deformations. I’ve learned to budget more time and patience for this stage of the process.

Only Add Weights (Don’t Remove Them)

In my first attempt, I made the mistake of removing weight values, which led to unpredictable deformations and stray weights affecting random parts of the mesh. From now on, I’ll stick to the principle of only adding or redistributing weight, rather than subtracting it entirely.

Regularly Clear Minor Weight Values

One effective tip I picked up was to regularly clear minor or stray weight values. Doing this helped clean up the skinning and eliminate small artefacts caused by tiny, unintended influences especially around joints and hard to reach areas.

Tutorials Used

The Mongrel Dabbler. (2024, May 24). Del'Syndius the Bull Troll | Full character sculpt part 13 | Skin weights part 1 [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuXphLaY3KA

Process Steps

Creating the HumanIK Skeleton

Begin by generating a HumanIK skeleton in Maya. This provides a predefined joint structure suitable for bipedal characters and gives a strong starting point for character rigging.

Positioning the Joints

Manually move and rotate the joints into anatomically appropriate positions on your model. Place the joints at natural pivot point including the elbows, knees, shoulders, and hips to ensure realistic deformations during animation.

Using Mirror Tools

Maya’s left-to-right mirroring tool can speed up the joint placement process. However, it may behave unpredictably with custom-added bones like the jaw, tail, or talons. It’s best to use the mirroring tool for the base skeleton and then manually position any additional or asymmetrical joints afterward.

Binding the Skin

Once the joint hierarchy is properly aligned with the model, bind the skin. This process attaches the mesh to the skeleton so that it deforms according to joint movement. At this stage, it’s crucial to double-check the influence settings and make sure that each mesh is bound to the correct part of the skeleton. The skeleton should turn rainbow color.

Skin Binding

Used Max Influence 3 & Geodesic Voxel
Know its complete when the skeleton turns rainbow coloured

Assign Non Linked Items To Joins/Bones

I assigned the feather and fluff groups to the relevant leg bones and arm bones so they move with the section of the body I needed them to
Feathers were assigned to the correct arm bones
Tail feathers to the tail bone
Neck fluff to the top spine bone
Leg fluff to the top leg bones
Eyes and the hat to the head bone

T-Pose & Exercise Routine / Checking Skin Weights (Range of Motion)

To support the weight paining, the character was placed in a number of poses to stretch the joints in natural ways to check for deformations.
Additional some of the inbuilt animations that exist in Maya where used to check the character would function if dropped into a game.
Seeing the character in the range of motions it would be expected to use helps to ensure the weight painting is done correctly so that the character mesh doesn't collapse or deform in weird ways when in use

Outcomes

Bones - HumanIK + Jaw, Tail & Spurs

Skin Weights

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