Rigging/Skinning workflow question

[Aurelia Chauveau]

Hi Guys

I'm a clothing designer, and I have managed to create a mesh/smooth bind/paint skin weights/upload to SL and it seems to work pretty good. However the next one I did, doesn't work as well - it's actually pretty much the same dress but with a bit longer skirt, and the skirt goes through the legs of the avatar in some parts while walking/posing. (Obviously I need to tweak my skin weights a bit more to work properly)

However, my question is, would it make my life easier, if I were to just bind the avatar to the mesh, paint its skin weights for all of it, and then just copy those skin weights over to the clothing over the top of the avatar (tweak as neccessary) and this way I would also see while I'm skinning if it was going to *sink into* parts of the avatar where the mesh ends. (middle bits I don't have an issue with because I can use an Alpha layer).

Just wondering if anyone else uses this kind of workflow to cut down how much skinning/painting weights they have to do. Or have an tips on how they do it.

I'm a maya user.

Thanks!

Aurelia :D