Paint Texture Deformer Weights Tool

With the Paint Texture Weights Tool, you can use a Maya Artisan brush to paint texture weights on your deformed geometry.

See also Texture deformer, Create a texture deformer, and Paint texture deformer weights.

Paint Texture Weights Tool settings

Lets you specify the settings for the Paint Texture Weights Tool in the Tool Settings editor. In the Paint Attributes section there are some attributes unique to the Paint Texture Weights Tool. These unique attributes are described below along with some of the common attributes, and how they apply to this tool. For descriptions of all other attributes in all other sections, see Artisan Tool Settings.

Tip:

You can define hotkey combinations to change most of the settings without opening the Tool Settings editor. For details on setting hotkey combinations, see Use Artisan hotkeys in the Artisan guide.

Paint Attributes section

These are descriptions of the attributes in the Paint Attributes section.

texturen.weights jointTexturen.weights

Displays the name of the texture selected to paint and the attribute you are painting (weights). To select another texture to paint, click this button and select the appropriate texture weights name. By default, the tool selects the first texture it detects on the surface (for example, texture1.weights, or jointTexture3.weights).

Filter: texture

Sets a filter so that only texture nodes display on the menu for the button above this one. You are painting textures with the Paint Texture Weights Tool, so you do not need to change this filter.

Paint Operation

Select which paint operation you want to perform on the selected texture.

Replace

Your brush stroke replaces the vertex weight with the weight set for the brush.

Add

Your brush stroke adds the vertex weight to the weight set for the brush.

Scale

Your brush stroke scales the vertex weight by the weight factor set for the brush.

Smooth

Your brush stroke averages the weights of adjacent vertices to produce a smoother transition between weights.

Value

Set the weight value to apply when you perform any of the painting operations.

Min/Max Value

Set the minimum and maximum possible paint values. By default, you can paint values between 0 and 1. Setting Min/Max Value can extend or narrow the range of values.

Negative values are useful for subtracting weight. For example, if you set Min Value to -1, Value to -0.5, and select Add for the operation, you would subtract 0.5 from the weight of vertices you paint.

Positive values are used as multipliers.

Tip:

To help you differentiate paint values when you paint with ranges greater than 0 to 1 (for example, -5 to 5), and to maximize the range of values that display when you paint values with ranges between 0 to 1 (for example, 0.2 to 0.8), set Min Color and Max Color (in the Display section) to correspond with the Min/Max values.

Clamp

Select whether you want to clamp the values within a specified range, regardless of the Value set when you paint.

Lower

Turn this on to clamp the lower value to the Clamp Value specified below. For example, if you clamp Lower and set the lower Clamp Value to 0.5, the values you paint will never be less than 0.5, even if you set the Value to 0.25.

Upper

Turn this on to clamp the upper value to the Clamp Value specified below. For example, if you clamp Upper, set the upper Clamp Value to 0.75, and set Value to 1, the values you paint will never be greater than 0.75.

Clamp Values

Set the Lower and Upper values for clamping.

Flood

Click Flood to apply the brush settings to all the weights on the selected texture. The result depends on the brush settings defined when you perform the flood.

Vector Index

If you are painting a three channel attribute (RGB or XYZ), select the channel you want to paint. Texture weight is a single channel attribute, therefore you do not need to change this setting.