Gorilla Brow Maya Skin Painting Deformation Sketch

Hi,

Here are some images from my painting weights of the brow i worked on today.  I sculpted and designed this model using ZBrush and Maya. (total time brow weighting 1hr)

1.   I like to think of the painting weights process as a different kind of  really drawing.  Instead of drawing with pencil and paper were drawing with a paint brush in Maya.

2.  Posing brow in these areas was really helpful to begin skinning.  I'm trying to pose brow in extreme positions which will hopefully make less extreme poses look better.

 (for the image above using smooth brush and varying opacity with just 2 joints unheld (the one currently painting, and the one we want extra weight to go to automatically) was extremely helpful to try to improve the deformation above.

3. putting center vertices near brow area to non brow (ex: head) was helpful to begin seeing how inner brow raising is working.

4. Drawing with pencil and paper was fun and helpful, and directly related to this rigging process.
(some applications of pencil/paper drawing to rigging painting weights drawing:

• knowing when to vary opacity to get smoother look
• seeing quickly that this area needs different weighting
• visualizing vertices to select quickly
• visualizing a pose to make to test paint weight
• knowing when to vary brush size and affect just vertices interested in drawing with

Here is a deformation test i made today.

Happy rigging!

cheers,
Nate

Inspired by
Sean Nolan  (snolan dot net)     -- I first learned about using the non flood feature of Maya smooth brush by reading his online tutorials.  I also learned about the hold all joints but 2 from his online tutorials.
Michael Comet ( comet-cartoons dot com) -- His online skin weighting tools are sensational, especially the select all vertices that are influenced by selected joint.