9

Skin Utilities 701
To use Skin Uti lities, you must have two meshes
to which the Skin modifier (page 1–791) has been
applied, both in the cur rent scene. You must have
already assigned bones to the Skin mo difier for
both meshes.
Note: Skin Utilities work by ma tching bones from
one character to another, so the task of copying
theskindatawillbegreatlysimplifiedifyouname
the bones in each mesh with similar naming
conventions.
Procedure
To use Sk in Utilities:
1.
Load a scene that contains two skinned meshes,
onefromwhichyouwanttoextracttheskin
data, the other to which you want to paste it.
2. Selectthesourcemesh,themeshwiththe
correct envelopes and vertex weights.
3. Choose Util ities panel > More button > Skin
Utilities.
4. Click Extract Skin Data to Mesh.
A new object is created, identical to the
selected object. This is a new mesh w ith all
envelope-assigned and m anually-assigned
vertex weights “baked” into the mesh. The
object is named with the prefix SkinData_
followedbythesamenameastheoriginal
object.
5. Movetheskindatameshontopofthemeshto
whichyouwouldliketopastetheskindata,so
thetwomeshesarecoincident.
6. If necessary, adjust the skin data object at the
Vertexsub-objectleveltomakeitfittheother
mesh as closely as possible.
7. Select both the skin data object, and the object
to which you want to paste the data.
8. ClickImportSkinDataFromMesh.
The Paste Skin Data dialog appears.
9. Match up the bones by hi g hlighting one on
each side of the dialog, and clicking the left
arrow to move the target bone to its mat ch on
the left side.
You can also highlight several bones on each
side at once, and click the left arrow to move
them all over at the same time. Only bone pairs
ontheleftsideofthedialogwillbepasted.
10. If the meshes’ vertices do not match exactly, set
the Interpolation method to Match by Face,
and increase the Threshold to a unit value that
wi ll allow the meshes’ faces to match up.
11. Click OK to paste the vertex weights and close
the dialog.
12. Deletetheskindatamesh.
Interfa ce
Extract Sk in Data to Mesh—Extracts the skin data
from the selected mesh and embeds it in a new
mesh named SkinData_ followed by the original
object name.
Note: Theskindataisstoredinchannels. Tosee
the data, select the SkinData_ mesh and use the
Channel Info Utility (page 2–1738).
Impor t S k in Data From Mesh—Opens the Paste Skin
Datadialog.Beforeclickingthisoption,youmust
select t he SkinData_ mesh and the mesh to which
you want to p aste the data.