[Thomas]

Sixth part: Skinning, bones influences and Weight Painting

Before editing the bones influence of the character, set different poses, like sitting, jumping, etc, but without changing the default pose at 0 second. Like this, we can edit the skinning without corrupting the default pose.

Double click on the character, to go to the vertex modeling room and switch to the Animation mode (button in the red circle)

The modeling room displays the model at the actual frame. If you switch from your initial pose to the first pose it will be easy to see the deformation of your model and then, correct them more easily. The arrows below show some problems.

The first way to correct the bone influences over the polygons, is to select these polygons. On the Bones tab, in the property panel, you can see which polygons are "connected" to the current selection (1) (vertices, edges or polygons). To change the current selection position (2), move the sliders of the associated bones (3).

In some specific cases, changing the influence can't help defined the good deformation, simply because a bone attraction is missing for the current selection (1). Then, in the "Add Bone" drop down menu, add the needed bone (2) and at last, change the new bone influence (3)

The other way to change a bone influence, is using the new Carrara weight painting tool. First, select the tool (1) and in the property panel, chose the bone influence to edit (2) and choose if you want to add or remove some influence from this bones to the polygons (3). Your object displays a gradient from yellow, orange to grey. Yellow mean a maximum influence. You can also set different properties for the brush (4) and activate the 3D brush (5). But this last option can generate unpredictable results, then, it's better to inactivate it.

Below, the weight painting of the pelvis in animation. Easy, no?

For the knee you can, as previous steps, set the bending and adjust it deformation. Now, you should understand perfectly why using pose for the skinning is useful! Do it for each bone of your body, to validate the deformations and bending of your body parts. Change of poses to study each transformation. Keep in mind that the weight painting tool doesn't work in symmetry mode. What you will do on the left part have to be done on the right part, and vice versa!