Tips on skinning

[hardarg]

I really find the upper body hard to skin. Mostly because of the number of bones they have, and their uses.

 

I've tried skin wrapping and painting weights, which works extremely well for the lower body. The spines and clavicles, are... okay I guess but...

What I don't understand is how do you distribute weights on those arms and twists? :confused:

 

EDIT: I'm using 3DS Max btw,

Edited February 2, 2013 by hardarg

[d0kefish]

Best tip I have, even tho mine turned out quite quarky the first time, is to check an original, and see how they weight it.

[elewin]

Weight painting takes finesse and practice. 3ds has a terrific built in rigging system, which you can leverage to test your weight map inside the program, instead of having to export to nif and test in game.

 

Skin wrap is fine for laying down the foundation, but you'll have to go in and fix the weight map manually.

[hardarg]

Thanks guys, i've been checking out the vanilla, as well as custom ones, and I think I'm getting how the twists work. Tested it in game so far, everything's okay with just a few more minor tweaks here and there. :D

[Ragicka]

I have a hard time with sleeves, there's just a lot going on in that area. Unless I can swap in a cut-away body (without the arm mesh), I try to avoid them. Getting lazy I guess but it just takes So. Much. Time. :wallbash:

 

D0kefish has a good idea, comparing other armors and seeing how it's done. I do this whenever I get stuck. What I do is enable the Vertices checkbox, switch to Hidden Line view and select a vertice in a trouble area. Then scroll through the bone list and note the weights listed in the Abs. Effect box. And then do the same for a few more vertices til I get a sense of how to go about it.

 

I don't know if that helps but like elewin said, it takes a lot of practice.