Rigid Bind To Smooth Bind

[doug-hines]

Using Maya 8.5, is there a way to transfer/convert a series of rigid bound joints to a smooth skin bind?

[molemansd7]

Depending on what exactly you need to do, you may just be able to add "flexors". You can look those up in the command docs. I'm not sure of another way to do it, but I'll check into it tomorrow at work and get back to ya. My initial thoughts are that the main difference between smooth and rigid binding is that rigid binding only allows each joint to me influenced by a single bone. So, wouldn't running a 'skinCluster -addInfluence...' command do it? Again, I'll have to look into it more tomorrow...no real docs here in front of me.

[doug-hines]

How about getting a list of vertices influenced by a specific joint? I've tried skinPercent, but I've only managed to get a list of bones.

I might be able to rework one of my scripts to go about reskinning based off of this type of list.

[molemansd7]

The only way I can think to do that off hand would be to cycle through all the verts, list their transforms and match that array to the joint name...if it returns true, add it into an 'influenced by joint array'. But that seems like a lot of work...there's gotta be a smarter, faster way...

[doug-hines]

Thanks. That helped alot.

[molemansd7]

QUOTE(kurokawa @ 12/14/07, 07:23 PM) [snapback]278139[/snapback]
Thanks. That helped alot.

I'll keep trying to poke around, but it seems like with Rigid Binds, it creates a jointCluster as opposed to a skinCluster node. I don't think you can change that. There may be another work around. You can query jointClusters, so maybe you could grab the joint, and find all the children the jointCluster is affecting. See where it plugs into or something.

[doug-hines]

Sounds like a plan