boneTool for Maya

by Wesley Howe

The boneTool is a MEL-script that allows skin weights for one or a cluster of vertices to be viewed and changed. Changes are done either one at a time, or setting all of the selected vertices to the same value. There are six Influence entries available... for models needing more than six weights, this is not a suitable tool. Joint specification is done with a popup menu that appears when using a right-click on any of the names. A popup menu is also attached to each weight entry box (in increments of 0.05), or a specific value can be entered directly.

Influences are loaded automatically from a selection, a new selection will automatically load in place of the previous one. Two buttons '+' and '-' allow moving between each selected vertex, with the influences and weights on the display updating on each change. To change an individual vertex, you alter the influences and click on the "Update One" button. Clicking on the "Set to All" button will set all selected vertices to the single displayed value. No changes are made to the model unless one of these two buttons is used. All influences not assigned are zeroed out on Maya 2011, otherwise Maya will normalize the weights if they do not total 1.0 (the tool totals the weighting as you work with it).

The main reason I wrote this tool is that I like to assign skin weights using a "banding" technique, since most things turn out to be somewhat akin to a cylinder. I select a "ring" of vertices and then set the weights for all of them the same. This is much easier to do with this tool than the component editor, and the window is less cluttered with data you do not need. I usually then work on individual vertices or small clusters of them while doing some test animations.

To download the file (in a .zip archive) just click on the picture above. I have only tested this on Maya 2011 x64 and Maya 2009 x64. This is not such a heavy task that it would benefit from being made into a plug-in, and Maya plug-ins are all version specific, making support difficult. Speaking of support, this is provided as-is, with no warranty of any type. However, I am interested in hearing of problems or successes, you can reach me at weshowe AT weshowe (dot) com (this website). Or look me up on the Area or CGTalk.

History:
V0.12 5 Aug., 2010 - Fix joint popup menu being incorrect on first invocation.
V0.11 4 Aug., 2010 - Revised some layout and flags for compatibility with Maya 2009.
V0.10 3 Aug., 2010 - Initial release