Bind skin bugged?

[rayco05]

Fairly new to Maya so I'm not sure if this is just a bug?

Half the time my bind skin doesn't work and I have to undo and bind skin again before it actually moves with the character. But once I save it and reload the file, the character no longer moves with the joints but Maya still thinks it is binded. The rig becomes unusable and I have to unbind it and rebind it. This didn't happen before with a previous character but now it happens every single time I reload a file after binding. 

I've tried importing my model into a different file before binding in case that file was corrupted but it still does the same thing. I've tried resetting preferences and reinstalling as well.

I also get another wierd thing where if I reload a file, the skeleton will move downwards and the arm bones will no longer be in the character arms. 

Edit: I'm really not sure what was wrong with my model, however, importing my model as OBJ into a new file did the trick and I did not face anymore of these wierd issues in the new file.

[hamsterHamster · Accepted solution]

Still unclear, could be display issues or something else.

Was the skin without the construction history, before you bound it to the skeleton? on exporting OBJ the history gets automatically deleted, you can do Edit>DeleteByType>NonDeformerHistory for the bound model, or just History for unbound.

If this doesn't help, attach that faulty zipped scene, zipped MA.

[rayco05]

You know what this seems like it was the problem after all. Going back to my previous file and trying this out actually worked. Can I ask why not deleting history of an object before skinning is so problematic?

[hamsterHamster]

Theoretically (in the perfect universe), shouldn't be a problem, once ALL the torture acts on the polyCube are registered in the construction and tweak nodes - slow or veeeeeery slooooooow, but still working somehow. My suspicion is, that not every record is kept. Sometimes the metamorphosis grows so complex that it even becomes impossible to continue modelling: the tools become unpredictable, stall or crash Maya. Therefore, the solution is to collapse/flatten/delete the node web, and Non-deformer history deletion is gold.