Skinning is the process of binding deformable objects to a skeleton. Typically, the deformable objects that are bound are NURBS or polygonal surfaces (meshes). These geometry objects become the character’s surface, or skin, and their shapes are influenced by the action of the skeleton’s joints. Once you’ve built a skeleton for a character, you can skin your character by using a smooth skinning method or a rigid skinning method.

Because wrap influence objects are themselves deformable objects, you can also bind them to a skeleton by smooth or rigid skinning. In turn, these can influence the NURBS or polygonal surfaces that provide the character’s skin.

In skinning with wrap deformers, you create wrap deformers for the deformable objects that you want to use for the character’s skin. Then you bind the wrap influence objects to the skeleton. The result is that the skeleton’s movement influences the objects being deformed by the wrap influence objects indirectly. Meanwhile, you can manipulate the wrap influence objects for more control over the deformation. This approach, skinning with wrap deformers, is called wrap skinning.