In the next steps, you’ll learn how joints and skin weights influence deformations at Jackie’s chest. In a subsequent section, you’ll improve uneven deformations.
To see how skin weights affect a skin’s deformation
The grayscale color of Jackie’s skin indicates how much influence the selected joint has on the skin deformation. In general, a white region of skin is influenced nearly entirely by the selected joint. A gray region is influenced significantly by one or two additional joints, and a black region indicates skin not influenced by the selected joint at all.
Each point on Jackie’s surface is influenced by three joints, as specified by the Max Influence setting in a prior step. However, one or two of the three joints might have so little influence as to be insignificant.
In this case, the left breast becoming irregularly shaped as you pose the arm indicates that one or more of the joints is exerting too much or too little influence on the surface. In the next steps, you will determine which joints are influencing the irregular region.
All joints that influence the selected vertices are selected in the Influences list.
Depending on which vertices you selected, the Influences list shows you that the main joints influencing this region are from the mid and upper back, and the left arm.
The left_arm_root is the main influence. The upper_back, mid_back, and left_top_rib also have influence, though not exactly in the same region.