Final Character Deformation - Game Character Development with Maya - page 864

Preparation and Binding
Before we can test our completed characters' deformations, we need to prepare the geo-
metry and bind it to the skeleton. If you followed the joint-based facial setup in Chapter
13 , your geometry is already bound to the skeleton, so feel free to skip along to the next
section.If,ontheotherhand,youareusingtheblendshapemethod,followtheinstructions
here for attaching the mesh to the base skeleton. This will drive the characters' movement,
deforming the mesh so that the character can achieve poses and, ultimately, animate.
Load the file called Kila_FaceRig_BS.mb, (or Grae_FaceRig_BS.mb if you are working
on him). The geometry for the first LOD is already prepared—in Chapter 13 we combined
it into a single mesh and cleaned it up, so it is ready for final weighting. The face and
bodymustremainseparatebecauseblendshapesmanipulateiterationsofalltheverticesof
Kila's face, allowing her to talk.
1. In the Outliner, navigate to the first joint of the base skeleton, called Root. Select it
and open up the hierarchy.
2. Go to Edit > Select Hierarchy to select all the objects beneath Root.
3. Although we have the skeleton hierarchy selected, there are some joints we don't
want to bind. Scroll down the Outliner and, holding Ctrl/Cmd, deselect all the
joints that end with _Tip. These are only here as visual aids; they do not deform
the character.
Also, make sure no icons or other nodes are selected, we want only the joints to
deform the mesh when moved.
4. With the correct joints selected, hold Shift and add the KilaBody mesh to the selec-
tion.
5. Go to Skin > Bind Skin > Smooth Bind and open the options. For Bind To, choose
Selected Joints; for Bind Method, choose Closest Joint; and set Max Influences to
3 and Dropoff Rate to 4 .
6. Click on Bind Skin; the body geometry is now attached to the base skeleton.