To bind skin and set initial weights based on a heat diffusion technique
- Select the joints and mesh you want to bind, then select Skin > Bind Skin >
. - In the Bind Skin Options, set the Bind Method to Heat Map. Note: Only influence objects defined inside the mesh emit heat during Heat Map binding. For example, if you bind to a skeleton with end joints that extend outside the mesh, the end joints will not receive any weights during binding, and have no influence on the mesh. However, in a case where a bone penetrates the mesh but its joint objects do not, all influence emitted from the bone is transferred to the parent joint, even though the parent joint is outside the mesh.
- Adjust the Heatmap falloff slider to control the dropoff of weights around your selected influence objects.
This can help to reduce the amount of small weights spread across the mesh during heat map binding.
By default, Heatmap falloff is set to 0.68, which provides a better overall weighting. A value closer to 0 produces smooth results but can let small weights spread far across the mesh surface. A value closer to 1 produces a sharper falloff, which keeps weights closer to the influence object, limiting the spread of small weights.
- Click Bind Skin.
Note: This method only works on polygon meshes. The method fails to find a solution on meshes with badly shaped faces, for example zero length edges or any edges shared between more than two faces.