Skinning complex geometry with overlapping elements can be difficult. A way to hide/isolate mesh elements is needed. Currently a workaround is to assign edit mesh/poly modifiers in the stack to hide/isolate geometry when skin weighting, but this is unnecessarily tedious to handle compared to how simple it is when isolating elements in the Unwrap UVW modifier for example. Another problem with this workaround is that the brush tool doesn't ignore hidden geometry, which means painting skin weights doesn't work as expected. The normal selection ignores hidden geometry, so why not the brush tool as well? However I acknowledge that the brush tool extends beyond the Skin modifier, so it deserves its' own suggestion thread. I saw there was an old, now archived thread suggesting this, but I frankly cannot understand why this suggestion should be ignored. Skinning is a fundamental part of animation and this would help a lot in the process. In any case, the brush should of course respect the hide/isolate feature so that you can paint "through" hidden geometry and only focus on what's visible. You can do this in Maya, so why not 3ds max.
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