3ds Max 2012 Bible - Kelly L. Murdock [433]
In Mirror Mode, you see an orange plane gizmo that marks the symmetrical line for the model. You can move and orient this plane using the Mirror Offset and Mirror Plane controls. Once oriented, Max computes the matching vertices based on the volumes from the mirror plane. All vertices on one half of the character appear blue, and all the matching vertices appear green. All vertices that cannot be matched appear red.
If you drag over bones or vertices in the viewports, you can select them. Clicking the Mirror Paste button pastes the envelopes and vertex weights of the selected vertices to their matches. Or you can select the Paste Green to Blue Bones button or one of its neighbors to copy all the green bones or vertices to their matches, or vice versa.
The Display Projection drop-down list projects the position of the selected vertices onto the Mirror Plane so you can compare their locations relative to each other. With lots of vertices in your skin, you want to enable the Manual Update, or the viewport refreshes become slow.
Tutorial: Mirroring skin weights
Now that you have spent the time correcting the skin weights for the left boot, you use the Mirror Weights feature to apply the same weights to the opposite foot.
To apply the skin weights to a character, follow these steps:
1. Open the Future man with corrected weights - final.max file from the Chap 40 directory on the CD.
2. With envelope mode turned on, select the Bip01 L Foot bone from the list in the Parameters rollout, and click the Mirror Mode button in the Mirror Parameters rollout. An orange gizmo is added to the viewport that divides the model, as shown in Figure 40.8.
3. Drag over all the vertices that make up the left boot, and then click the Paste Blue to Green Verts button. All the vertex weights on the left side of the model are copied to the right side. The pasted vertices turn yellow once pasted.
Display and Advanced settings
The Display rollout controls which features are visible within the viewports. Options include Show Colored Vertices, Show Colored Faces, Color All Weights, Show All Envelopes, Show All Vertices, Show All Gizmos, Show No Envelopes, Show Hidden Vertices, Draw On Top Cross Sections, and Draw On Top Envelopes.
With these display options, you can turn on and off the weight color shading on vertices and faces. You can also select to show all envelopes, vertices, and gizmos. The Color All Weights option is unique. It assigns every bone a different color and shows how the weights blend together between bones.
FIGURE 40.8
In Mirror mode, matched bones and vertices appear green and blue.
The Advanced Parameters rollout includes an option to Back Transform Vertices. This option avoids applying transform keys to the skin because the bones control the motion. The Rigid Vertices and Rigid Patch Handles options set the vertices so that they are controlled by only one bone. This rollout also includes buttons to Reset Selected Vertices, Reset Selected Bones, and Reset All Bones. This is handy if you really mess up a skinning job, because it gives you a chance to start over. It also includes buttons for saving and loading envelopes. The envelopes are saved as files with the .env extension.
The Animatable Envelopes option lets you create keys for envelopes. Weight All Vertices is a useful option that automatically applies a weight to the nearest bone of all vertices that have no weight. The Remove Zero Weights button removes the vertex weight of any vertex that has a value lower than the Zero Limit. This can be used to remove lots of unnecessary data from your model if you need to put it on a diet.
Using deformers
Below the Advanced Parameters rollout is the Gizmos rollout. You use this rollout to apply deformers to selected skin object vertices. Three deformers are available in the Gizmos rollout: a Joint Angle Deformer, a Bulge Angle Deformer, and a Morph Angle Deformer.
Each of these deformers is unique. They include