During rigid skinning, for each joint, Maya creates a set of rigid skin points. The set contains all the points (NURBS CVs, polygonal vertices, or lattice points) that can be influenced by a particular joint. By default, the sets are organized into a partition, which means the sets can have no members in common.
You can organize points into a partition of sets before you bind skin, arranging for some of the points to become rigid skin points while other points can be influenced by, for example, a cluster or lattice deformer parented to a nearby joint. Using cluster or lattice deformers with rigid skinning can be a good way to get smooth deformation effects around areas such as shoulders, and provide an alternative to using flexors (see
Flexors). However, you must plan ahead and carefully decide which points are affected by what, or your character can suffer from double transformation effects. See
Double transformation effects.
Note: Rigid Bind menu options have been removed from Maya to streamline other workflows. Rigid Bind functionality is still present using the scripting commands provided in the
Rigid skinning topic. You can also obtain a Rigid bind using smooth skin with 1 influence per vertex.
For more information on sets and partitions see Sets and partitions in the Basics guide.