Final Character Deformation - Game Character Development with Maya - page 910

FIGURE 14.41 Fully weight each strand of hair to its closest joint.
Tip
You can quickly turn off all the icons by going to the view's Show menu
and disabling NURBs Curves.
2. Select the character mesh and open the Paint Skin Weights tool, highlighting the
first hair joint, Hair_A ( Figure 14.41b ).
3. With both Value and Opacity set to 1 , begin to paint over the polygonal strands of
hair that are closest to the joint. Start on the outside and work your way in, making
sure you don't paint too far up the head ( Figure 14.41c ) .
4. Repeat these steps for the remaining strands of hair, weighting them fully to their
closest joints ( Figure 14.41d ).
5. At present, if the hair moves, it will look quite rigid because we have fixed the ver-
tices rigidly to each joint ( Figure 14.42 , left). To help free the hair, allowing it to
flow more naturally, paint over the strands again, but this time use the Smooth
paint operation ( Figure 14.42 , right).
FIGURE 14.42 Smooth out each strand of hair, allowing the hair more movement.
Our aim was to give Kila's hair some life, “unlocking” it from her head, and we have
achieved that. You can now animate the controls, and the hair will follow smoothly.