Maya is Unable to perform Heatmap

[TnXnT]

I'm currently trying to use Heatmap skinng, but whenever I want to bind the Skin Maya says:

"Unable to perform heatmap bind operation. Validate that hierarchy is inside mesh volume and  geometry does not contain non-manifold vertices or edges."

I checked everything, used all Clenup options, the Mesh should be Optimized.

Had the same Problem before with a similar Mesh and it just dissapeared after reopening the Project a week later (dont't have the time to count on that). 

[Kahylan · Accepted solution]

Hi!

This error can also occur when your mesh is very small or contains really small triangles or contains multible combined meshes with overlaps. I would have to see the mesh to rule out the usual suspects...

If your Rig is scaleable, you could try to perform the bind operation on double scale to see if that helps. But I've also encountered this problem on meshes where I just could not fix it and I didn't find a pattern so far.

Heatmap Binding is not really all that much better than closest distance binding anyways, if you want optimal results you'll probably have to tweak the weights on every single joint.

I would just bind with closest distance and then invest the time in tweaking the weights instead of relying on heatmap and investing time in getting it to bind. It sucks, but thats just what you have to do sometimes.

[TnXnT]

hey ,thanks for the tip, yeah i think, i'm gonna try it by distance