Bake Deformer tool

• From the Rigging menu set: Skin > Bake Deformation to Skin Weights
• Enter BakeDeformerTool in the Maya Command line

Use the Bake Deformer Tool to approximate deformations from arbitrary deformers so that you can export complex rigs to applications that have limited deformer support. This method binds meshes to skeletons using a 'smart' calculation of weight values.

Note: Bake Deformation to Skin Weights does not create a new type of deformer, nor does it modify the result of the existing deformers on the Source character.

Note: This works well with deformations like Rigid Bind and Delta Mush. You can also use it as a quick trick for determining default character bind weights

See Bake deformers on a character for information about using this tool.

Source

Specify the character you want to simplify.

Mesh

The mesh that is to be baked.

Skeleton

The skeleton that is to be baked.

Destination

Specify what receives the transformation.

Mesh

The mesh to which deformations are applied.

Skeleton

The skeleton to which the deformation are applied.

After Maya 2018 update 4, skeleton colorization is no longer automatic when you use the Bake Deformer tool and no color is assigned to the skeleton when you create a new skincluster.

Now, skeleton colorization is optional. If you want the skeleton to be colorized, you can activate it with a script in the Script Editor using the following flag on the bakeDeformer command:

colorizeSkeleton = true

Number of influences

Lets you increase or decrease the maximum number of influences that are used per vertex.