Adjusting smooth skin behavior

If you don’t like the smooth skin’s behavior, you can detach the skin, edit the skeleton or the deformable objects, set new binding options, and then bind again. Skinning can be an iterative process of checking the binding, detaching, editing the skeleton, and then binding again. For more information on detaching skin, see Detach smooth skin.

However, if you just want to edit the smooth bind options (for example, Max Influences and Dropoff Rate) without detaching and binding again, you can do so. For more information, see Editing maximum influences, and Edit joint smooth skin attributes.

To change the smooth skinning deformation effects, you can edit the skin point weights with the Component Editor or the Paint Skin Weights Tool. As you check the binding, you can use the Paint Skin Weights Tool to view joint influences and change them by painting. This tool provides an intuitive way to modify the deformation effects. For more information, see Painting smooth skin point weights.

Note that when you edit joint smooth skin attributes and change Dropoff attributes, you then have to have Maya recalculate the affected skin point weights. In turn, this can alter any other changes you might have made to the skin point weights. Consequently, it’s a good practice to edit the Dropoff attributes first, and then proceed to editing and painting the skin point weights.

You can also control smooth skinning deformation effects with smooth skin influence objects. A smooth skin influence object can be any NURBS surface, NURBS curve, or polygonal surface (mesh). For more information, see Using smooth skin influence objects.

Going to the bind pose

The bind pose is the pose that the skeleton is in when you bind skin. When you pose a character’s skeleton after skinning, the skeleton’s actions cause deformations to the skin. The only pose that does not cause deformations to the skin is the bind pose.

You must return to the bind pose if you decide to bind additional objects.

Note that if you bound smooth skin to selected joints only, going to bind pose will nevertheless return all the joints the skeleton to the bind pose. Also, the skeleton will go to the bind pose even if it is parented to group nodes. The group nodes will not prevent going to bind pose.

Overcoming problems with reaching bind pose

The skeleton will not be able to go to the bind pose right away if the attributes of any of its joints are locked. Typically, joint attributes can be locked by constraints, expressions, IK spline handles, or any IK handles with keys set. These features can drive the values of certain joint attributes, locking them up for exclusive use. That they do lock certain attributes is desirable because it provides for the reliable effects of these features. However, if you want to go to the bind pose, you must first disable the nodes that are locking the attributes. A quick way to do this is to disable all of the nodes by selecting Modify > Evaluate Nodes > Ignore All. Next, select Skin > Go To Bind Pose, and then enable all nodes again by selecting Modify > Evaluate Nodes > Evaluate All.

Changing the bind pose

To change the bind pose, detach the smooth skin, adjust the skeleton and deformable objects as desired, and then bind skin again. You can also reset the bind pose from the Command Line. See Reset bind pose from Command Line.