Bake Deformer tool

The Bake Deformer Tool

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

Number of influences

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

Colorize Skeleton

When on, bound skeletons and their skin vertices are colorized so that vertices appear the same color as the joints and bones that influence them.

You can also use a script in the Script Editor to activate skeleton colorization using the following flag on the bakeDeformer command:

colorizeSkeleton = true

Note: You can change the colors of individual joints and bones from the Display > Wireframe window.

Range of Motion

Use these settings to define from where in the animation poses are sampled. The default is Automatic. which runs your rig through standard poses. If you want to use a custom range of motion for poses, you can choose the Start/End or Time Slider to set which poses to take.

Choose from three options:

• Automatic: When selected, clicking Bake Range of Motion to Keys bakes the automatic sample poses to the Time Slider to be key poses that you can use as a starting point to tweak, add, or remove poses. Using this option changes the Range of Motion to Start/End and fills in the start/end times based on the baked poses.
• Start/End: Activate this option to enter a custom frame range from which to derive poses.
• Time Slider: Takes the range of poses from the Time Slider.

Bake Range of Motion to Keys...

Bakes the automatic range of motion to keyframed poses.