3D Toolkit - Skin Weight Painting (17/03/25)

I didn't fully understand the process of weight painting. I know that it's used to fix the way a limb bends but I wasn't entirely sure how to execute it. For this lesson I focussed on making notes on Simon's demonstrations.

Checking the Rig Works

animation to check if rig works

use rotate tool click on elbow

right click on rotate y - Key selected

click 10 ahead in timeline make rotate y - 80 

then 10 ahead rotate y to 0

repeat for shoulder, wrist, each finger

thumb rotates on x axis

Method 1

Skin menu

Select joint and skin

Bind skin (does it automatically, works better with T poses over A poses)

can alter options to reduce this such as changing the max influence

Skin Menu

Paint Skin Weight Options

b changes size of brush

lock all joints ur not working on

flood it

set value to 0.5 switch to add, paint around elbow

switch to 0.25 on value, paint them further from elbow joint, be careful not to go over twice because theyll add

change to 0.75 and paint on the side of the join closest tom shoulder

Paint top part of the arm (shoulder 1) be careful not to touch already painted vertices, switch it to replace rather than add?

if paint not working right click on the layer and click select vertices

Interactive Bind Skin

let's you change position, size and rotate it. Can change in different axis

Method 2

Windows - General Editors - Component Editors

unsmooth it (1)

Smooth Skins

Attribute Editor - Skin cluster

Select all vertices on the knuckle of pinky

select all on pinky 1 (component editor), change to 1

this will create some strange distortion

to fix it

select multiple joint bits

(2nd column) change to 0.5 if first column = 1

1st column used as reference