Skinning your bones

Skinning your bones

To skin a character – you need to apply a skin modifier to the mesh. Make sure that the mesh is highlighted >modifier list > Skin modifier . A dialogue box appears, where you chose the bones that you wish to add to your skin. Click OK and your mesh is skinned to the bones.

Sometimes the skin attaches to the wrong areas of the character and makes the mesh deform.

Apply some animation to your character so that you can see where the skin is dragging.

Skin modifier > Edit envelopes. The inside envelope is red and shows all of the vertices that are affected by it. Outside envelope maroon and shows all the vertices that are gradually affected by the envelope.

If you don’t want envelope to include vertices – go to rollout, in select box, click on vertices. Lasso select the vertices that are not part of the bone. Go to Weight properties > exclude vertices. The vertices will snap back to the correct area of the envelope.

Deformation of areas.

Joint angle gizmo

Select skin – envelope – select bone which needs changing – gizmos – Select vertices and then add the gizmo. Makes a lattice around the joint. You can edit the lattice. Edit lattice button will allow you to move the vertices of the lattice help with the deformation of the mesh. To make a better joint angle.

Bulge angle gizmo

Allows the muscle to bulge when moved. Modify – Envelope – select vertices that you want to bulge. Scroll down to gizmos > bulge angle deformer. Select Vertices > Add gizmo.

Morph angle gizmo

Select mesh > select joint that is to be moved. Select Vertices around area > gizmos > morph angle > add gizmo. There is a stack of modifiers based on the angle of the joint. You have to remodel the angle of the gizmo. Edit mesh on stack and resculpt the joint. This allows fine tuning of the joint. Add from stack will change the deformations.