(Maya) Do not weight mesh to certain joints?

[Phate Shepherd]

Any Maya pros know how to mark a joint so that it is part of the rig, but weigting the mesh to the rig ignores those joints?

For example, when weighting an avatar mesh to a rig, I don't want the mesh weighted to mEye(Left/Right) or mSkull.

I have tried to bind to "only selected joints" but I can't find a way to deselct the Eyes and Skull.

I can fix it post binding, but that is a pain.

 

[elvis Woodget]

you has allways to bind the whole skeleton

[Phate Shepherd]

I guessed that I would have to bind the whole skeleton, but I thought there might be a way to tell maya to not assign any weights to specific joints.

[BastChild Lotus]

I don't know if this will work.. but I think it might help. (I'm in Maya 2012)

 

Go to Window<Gerneral Editors<Component Editor

Then find the tab for smooth skin - Click on that.

 

Should show all the joints/bones by name..  you can set the weighting by hand here.. 0 is none, 1 is full or 100% or you can do something in between.

 

Good luck! Please let me know if it works.

 

 

[Phate Shepherd]

In the component editor, the bones show, but the grid is empty and the slider is disabled.

It isn't a big deal. Heck, there are a lot more issues that I need to fight through.... Like using the interactive bind system which makes a lot more sense to me than smooth bind. (It works, but child meshes don't go along for the ride like they do with smooth bind.

[Nytro Stovall]

The component editor is empty if you have nothing selected. What you want to do is right click-hold the mesh object, release on "Vertices". now drag-select a box over the vertices of the head. The vertices should come up in a top-to-bottom list in the Component Editor. You should be able to then click the "smooth skins" tab at the top of the editor, as it should already be bound. Now you can find the tiles at the top that say "mEye, rEye, etc" (or whatever the names of the joints are that you want to zero out). Now left-click the top most value box (usualy something like vtx[0]) then scroll all the way down the column and shift-left click the last one in the same column, hit "0" and then enter, so set the values of all those vertices for that joint to zero. Now they are bound to the skeleton but carry no weights.

 

Also, interactive isn't a "bind", it is simply a weighting method, its not a binding method. Smooth bind and rigid bind are binding methods. interactive, post, and classic are weighting methods. I'm not sure what you mean by "child meshes", but I think you mean other meshes following the same skin? In that case, just smooth bind and use the transfer weights option.