Tips for skin weighting

00:04

So here we have a fully weighted model

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at this stage. I would say this is a first pass on the skin weights.

00:12

They aren't final just yet,

00:14

but they are good enough that we can continue with the rigging process.

00:19

The good thing about the waiting is that we can

00:21

continue to tweak the values as we build the rig

00:24

and also after it's finished.

00:26

So don't worry if they aren't perfect just yet.

00:31

I have a few final tips

00:34

first. It's a good idea to use a prune small weights tool from time to time.

00:39

This can be found here under the skin menu.

00:42

This will remove any weights under a set value.

00:45

So here it will remove any that are under 0.01.

00:50

These are super small influences. So it's best to clear them out.

00:54

All may I will do is take any weights

00:56

under this value and redistribute them to the surrounding joints

01:02

next.

01:03

And you should probably do this right at the end

01:05

of the rigging process once the rig is final,

01:08

but remove any unused influences.

01:12

Now, unreal will ignore any joints that don't have any weight values.

01:17

So it's not essential

01:18

but it's just good housekeeping.

01:21

Finally back up, the weights

01:24

simply go to deform export weights to save them.

01:28

Having a backup is essential because you never know you might inadvertently

01:32

break the skin whites or which has often happened to me,

01:36

the whites just go wild for no reason.