Mesh Clothing (( MAYA ))

[Sae Luan]

I understand and have found tutorials on rigging the clothing meshes I create to bring them into SL, but I don't understand what this weight thing is all about?  Is this something that happens when I'm rigging the clothing in Maya, or something I select upon upload into Second Life?  I haven't actually created any clothing meshes yet and brought them in because I tend to like to understand what I'm doing before I actually do it lol. 

Thanks for any information.

[DanielRavenNest Noe]

First you create your clothing mesh.  Then you add the bone skeleton.  Finally you need to tell the 3D software which bone each vertex of your mesh needs to follow.  In the middle of a limb, it's easy - it follows just that bone.  At joints it's more complicated.  You need to follow two or more neaby bones to get a smooth bend.  That's what weighting is, telling the software how much to follow one bone vs another.  The weights need to add up to 1.0 or 100% in total.  Those weights get exported in the Collada .dae file, and uploaded into SL.  You need to check the "skin weights" box on the 3rd tab of the upload window to have it use the data.  Once in SL, your clothing will then follow the movements of the avatar bones as they animate, according to the weights you assigned.

[Marielle Caerndow]

First you have to create the skin-weights in Maya, so that your mesh follows the skeleton movement (still in Maya).

Like in this  video from Autodesk:

Afer all looks good in Maya, you just tell the SL-uploader to include the skin-weighs.

[Sae Luan]

Thank You for your help

[Nalates Urriah]

You'll find more tutorials under the topic of vertex weight painting. YouTube is your friend. Unfortunately you have to dig through lots of grabbage. 

If you find a great tutorial for Maya weight painting, come back and share it.

[Sae Luan]

I'll be sure to do that