How to accurately skin/bone weight mesh models in Maya 2011

[Mae Liamano]

In the following paragraph, I will be using the words "weighting"/"weights" as apposed to "skinning" or "skin"

I've been messing around with a hairstyle I've been wanting to upload as a rigged mesh, after watching a video by Sae Luan. On my first upload I noticed that my rig was successful in the fact that it was actually rigged to something, but disappointed to find out that I had done a horrible job properly weighting. See here.

Strands had been rigged to the eyeballs and there were jagged pieces everywhere, so the first thing I did was cancelled out the "weights" that were caused by the eyes by holding CTRL and erasing the weight. I did this with every bone and went back and repainted weights by hand.

I currently have about 90% of the hair style corrected, but have spent more time than ever wanted sitting and repainting ever single strand. I'm still left with pieces that move, and I have no idea what is actually moving them.

90% corrected screen shot

Another thing I might note, is that my meshes do not look at all lovely when built to the ground. This may have something to do with my problem

Rigged mesh on ground

-Left: Untextured

-Middle: Untextured with Shine

-Right: Singular hair texture applied

 

 

 

Is there a better way to do what I'm doing? :matte-motes-stress: