I struggle WITH painting WEIGHTS In maya, Is there a Better alternative? Antony Ward replies

As good as Maya is with its many, many tools, it isn’t perfect and there are always areas where it could be improved. Due to its versatility, tools and plugins are constantly being developed by talented technical artists around the world, which are meant to fill the holes in Autodesk’s software and make our lives easier.

Over the years Autodesk has taken note of some of these plugins and incorporated them into its toolset, but there are still some key tools I use every day which the company should perhaps think about building into the application too.

Painting and managing skin weights in Maya has always been a bit of a chore, and although recent releases have seen the tools being improved, I still find them a little hit and miss. My current tool of choice when tackling weights is ngskintools. Rather than add to the current tools on offer, its developer, Viktoras Makauskas gives us a whole suite of tools that take what currently exists and enhances them, making painting and managing skin weights much easier and intuitive.

My favourite aspects of ngskintools are the improved smooth tool algorithm which smooths the weights as you would expect and in a more predictable manner – you don’t end up with weights being assigned at random places.

I also love how you can dictate which joints the weights will transfer to when mirroring values, plus you can perform this while the character is posed, which is something that the standard mirror weights tool struggles with.

These features are just the tip of the iceberg as it has many more to offer, take the layer system for example. This enables you to also paint weights using layers, as you would in Photoshop. This means you can be more selective about the areas you work on, breaking them down into more manageable chunks rather than tackling the whole character at once.

If you manage skin weights on a regular basis I would recommend that you give ngskintools a try. There is a free evaluation version available too, so you can try before you buy.