Skinning Quickies

This is a collection of macros for completing quick tasks while skinning. Most of these are just simple tasks found in the modify panel for skin which did not have macros already available, but there are still some custom ones in the mix. I decided to put this together when starting to use my new Wacom tablet for skinning, as it was annoying to always have to go to the UI to accomplish some of these tasks.

Macros include:

• Paint weights enable/disable
  • Alternate execute brings up brush options
• Paint blend weights enable/disable
• Always Deform enable/disable
• Enable All Always Deforms
• Disable All Always Deforms
• Remove Zero Weights
  • Very handy for quick access, as running this allows you to then subtract weights without worrying about those weights being added back to random bones which you have previously told not to affect those verts.
• Open Weight Tool
• Grow Selection
• Shrink Selection
• Loop Selection
• Ring Selection
• Export Weights
  • Alternate execute saves file to temporary location to be able to essentially just use this to copy all the weights for the current skin modifier.
• Import Weights
  • Alternate execute loads file from the temporary location where export saved to, essentially allowing you to paste all weights for the current skin modifier.
• Bake All Verts
  • Bakes all verts for the current skin modifier. This takes into account the fact that the skin modifier can be instanced across several objects, and bakes the verts on all of these objects.
• Select Influenced Verts
  • Selects all vertices which are being influenced in some way by the currently selected bone. This works as an “add to selection”, so you can select a bone and tell it to select influenced verts, select another bone and run again to add verts influenced by that bone to your vert selection.
• Remove Null Bones
  • Skin wrap is a great tool for quickly getting skinning for a high res mesh from a low res mesh, or getting a quick skinning solution for accessories which should be following the character’s deformations. Unfortunately, it adds all bones used in the skinning solution of the object being wrapped to, regardless of whether or not the object being wrapped needs them. If it is something small, such as a button, it likely only requires one or two bones and the rest of the bones are not doing anything. This macro provides a quick clean up by removing any bones from the skin modifier that are not influencing any verts.
• Pressure Sensitivity Enable/Disable
• Export Bones
  • Sometimes skinning solutions become corrupt and need to be started again. Using this and Import Bones, below, in combination with Export Weights/Import Weights will allow you to very quickly and easily transfer your skinning to a new mesh without missing a beat. Simply clone the mesh, export your bones, export your weights, add a skin modifier to the mesh clone, import bones, import weights, and you are right back where you left off without a corrupted skinning solution.
• Import Bones
• Select Envelope
  • Emulates Maya’s quick envelope selection tool. Simply hover your mouse over the envelope you wish you select and run the macro; it does a number of calculations to determine which of the bones in the skin modifier was closest to your mouse at the time of evaluation. NOTE: The tool does not work off of the envelopes’ positions, rather the center position of the actual node that the envelope represents. The reason for this is that I could not find any methods to get the positions of the envelopes. If you have moved your envelopes far from their original positions, the accuracy of your selection will decrease.

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Macros can be found under the category “facerFX Skinning Quickies”