Most of the controls in the skinning panel are disabled unless a skinned attachment has been selected in the right-hand Skeleton list. Once a skinned object has been selected, then the skinning panel can be used to control it's attributes.

If the Disable button is engaged, then the bone's deformation is turned off, so it affects no vertices.

The Restore button will cause the vertices of the skinned object to be restored from the skinning cache. This button is provided in case the skinned object becomes damaged somehow.

Auto Skinning

A bone will select a set of vertices to skin by default. The default set of vertices is defined by a box around the bone. Clicking the Show button to display the box in wireframe in the scene.

The Adjust panel contains controls for adjusting the selection box.

Y and Z control the dimensions of the box. Root and Tip control how far the box extends beyond the joints of the bone. Use Ramp values to add falloff regions to the box. In the falloff regions, the vertex weights are decreased. When two (or more) bones have overlapping falloff regions, the bone deforms are blended together based on the vertex weights.

Vertex Painting

Often, the vertex selection box does not allow sufficient detail over the vertex selection or weighting. To solve this problem, Motion Studio includes a sophisticated vertex painting tool. Clicking the Edit button will open the vertex painter.

SDS Support

Motion Studio can be used to skin SDS control cages. Skinning with SDS cages is highly recommended. Because the poly count is low, trueSpace is more responsive during editing and animation preview. Also, the SDS process will automatically smooth creases or problem areas in your objects caused by posing. You can apply SDS smoothing to an object at any time before or after attaching it to a bone.

When working with SDS objects, you should keep them in non-smoothed mode. Smoothed SDS objects need to recalculate smoothing frequently while working with IK and will tend to be very slow to respond. For this reason, Motion Studio does not recalculate smoothing during editing (but it does when rendering). If you work with your objects in non-smoothed mode, response time is fast, and renders will be smoothed correctly.

If you want to have an object in smooth mode, depress the Auto SDS button, and Motion Studio will update the smoothed SDS object as needed. You can also force an SDS refresh by clicking the SDS button.