ngSkinTools2: skinning character body

In this video, we take a rig and skin the whole body from start to finish. It’s a bit of a lengthy video, so use the chapters to jump around and skip things if bored. Please note I’m primarily a developer, so take any advice here with a grain of salt, and don’t hesitate to ask in the comments if anything was not clear - I’ll be happy to answer. Chapters: 00:00 Intro 00:45 Prerequisites 01:10 Torso 01:40 Torso: initial weights 01:55 Selecting joints on screen with shortcut S 02:10 Torso: blocking continued 02:46 Torso: setting up automatic mirroring 03:00 Torso: animating the rig for skinning (calysthenics) 04:10 Torso: smoothing & refining 05:10 Shoulders 05:32 Neclace: matching weights of multiple geometry shells 05:52 Shoulders: adjustments continued 06:24 Solving double-geometry intersections with volume smoothing 06:33 Shoulders: adjusting neck 06:54 Shoulders: adjusting neclace 07:17 Shoulders: using vertex selection to limit smoothing 07:32 Shoulders: more adjustments 07:56 Upper arm 08:11 Layer mask (very important!) 08:27 Upper arm: posing 08:45 Mask continued 09:40 Upper arm: refining twists 10:08 Forearm 10:36 Forearm: prepare good test animation 11:24 Forearm: adjusting twist joints 13:51 Finding issues: toggle layers on and off to find the offender 14:10 Taking a step back and checking on the progress 14:30 Hand 15:11 Use extreme poses! 15:37 Disclaimer: go back and fix the rig if you’re in trouble, don’t fix everything with smoothing 16:14 Hand: reviewing, fixing isues 16:48 Thumb 17:36 Thumb: fixing volume loss 17:52 Thumb: review 18:07 Fingers 18:30 Avoid smoothing on low density geometry, too much volume loss 18:49 Sharpening to preserve volume 19:28 Fingers: masking 20:23 Head 20:33 Warning: fix the rig if you see this 21:28 Fixing neclace to move together with the neck 21:52 Legs 22:19 Damme, Van Damme 23:10 Feet 23:28 Keeping rigidity and shaping the deformation 24:51 Feet: rechecking 25:01 Final notes Other tutorials for various ngSkinTools2 features: Model: “Lukas“ by Malicki () Rig built using mGear: