Iker J. de los Mozos is a Character TD for Walt Disney Animation Studios who recently worked on the visually-rich film Moana. Iker is also an accomplished instructor and lecturer, who has posted a great introductory look into the Maya SkinCluster basics.
Mayas SkinCluster is a skinning node that serves as a deformer for binding geometry to joints. Each vertex of the geometry can be affected by any number of joints. This makes it possible to create more realistic character deformations.
Think of your moving finger which also move parts of the upper forearm because of muscles moving up there. Maya’s skinCluster can hand that. What makes it unique inevitably makes it difficult to learn. Painting weights is something that new users to Maya need some time to get right.
This is why Iker’s look into the Maya SkinCluster node is so great. Iker walks through how the scinCluster node works, and offers some great tips and techniques along the way, all in an easy to understand presentational format. Thanks Iker!
