Show in Contents
Add to Favorites
Home: Autodesk Maya Online Help
Using smooth skin influence objects
Editing smooth skin
Rigid Skinning
Swapping bound geometry
with unbound geometry
You can switch an unbound piece of geometry
with your character’s bound geometry and transfer all your smooth
skin’s weights to it with the Substitute Geometry menu
item.
Substitute
Geometry lets the various stakeholders in your production
pipeline (like modelers, technical directors, and animators) work
on the same character at the same time without having to redo the
character’s skin weights multiple times.
Substitute
Geometry is located in Edit Smooth Skin section
of the Skin menu (
Skin > Edit Smooth Skin > Substitute Geometry).
NoteWhen the piece of
unbound geometry you want to swap is the duplicate of a skin (bound
geometry), then Substitute Geometry will only
produce valid results if the skin’s skeleton was at its bind
pose when it was duplicated.
Limitations
- Does not allow
you to swap pieces of bound geometry.
- Does not support modeling operations
after the skin in the bound geometry’s history. All modeling nodes
between the skin and the bound geometry’s shape node must be removed
before substituting geometry.
- Does not support subdivision surfaces.
- Does not work with surfaces that have
blend shapes.
- Vertices on the new skin that are some
distance from the original piece of bound geometry may not map well
and may require re-weighting. You can improve your weighting results
by using the Re-weighting Distance Tolerance perimeter
in the Substitute Geometry Options window.