Skinning Influences

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I was wondering about how I can have an easier time skinning in maya, and I have a question that I would like to ask. I never tried to do this way before, but this is just a thought.

My question is if I set the maximum number of influences to 1 before I bind the skin, wouldn't each bone only affect itself? 

For example, If the shoulder joint of my character only has 1 influence, wouldn't that make the process faster when trying to remove the neck influences from the shoulder? 

[gautham.chandran47 · Accepted solution]

I understand whats in your mind.

The maximum number of influence means how many joints can affect a single vertex at max. As leaving it like that, suppose take mouth, for example, its affected by the jaw joints, neck/head joints, and lip joints if there is any. This will give you a more realistic deformation. Putting it to one means only one joint can affect a vertex which will result in pointy deformations. To get a smooth deformation you need at least 3 max joint influences in my opinion. 

And back to your question, yes it will be more easy to edit the skin weights because you don't have to worry about the other influences but it won't be realistic. It's fine if you're rigging a mechanical object but for an organic one, no.

I hope I explained it well. Feel free to ask any questions.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for replying. I understand what you mean. 

The reason I was asking was just to speed up the process of skinning, but it makes sense that 1 influence would work better for mechanical characters or objects.

Anyway, thanks for the answer.