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.

If you bound skin to selected joints only, going to the bind pose still returns all the joints of the skeleton to the bind pose. Also note that the skeleton will go to the bind pose even if it is parented to group nodes.

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

When you bind skin, Maya creates a bind pose node (default name: bindPosen where n is a sequential number) for each skeleton. The bind pose node keeps track of the transformation attributes (translation, rotation, and scale) of the joints when skinning takes place. The bind pose node also keeps track of the transformation attributes of any influence objects. The bind pose node facilitates putting the skeleton back into the bind pose at any time after binding skin.

The use of constraints, expressions, or IK handles with keys set can restrict going to the bind pose. If you are using constraints, expressions, or IK handles and you want to go back to the bind pose, you will need to disable the nodes that carry out these features. They can restrict going to bind pose because they can lock the attributes they affect, preventing them from being set to the bind pose values.