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Character Tools
You can weight joints by selecting them and painting directly onto the mesh using the Weight tool. While the
Weight tool is active, the mesh is displayed black and the currently painted weighting is shown in white. The
joint now knows it should affect the white painted parts of the mesh only. In the active Weight tool mode,
weighting is shown for the selected joints. Each joint has its own weighting.
The joints must be arranged into a hierarchy in the Object Manager in a similar structure to the bones in your
own body. In real life, when you move your upper arm, the lower arm and hand move with it because they are
effectively children of the upper arm.
Likewise, in CINEMA 4D’s Object Manager, the elbow and wrist joints must be children of the shoulder joint.
If you move the shoulder joint, the child joints will move with it together with the mesh weighted to the child
joints — even though the shoulder joint is weighted to the upper arm only.
As previously mentioned, each child joint has its own weighting and moves the parts of the mesh not weighted
to the shoulder joint.
Don’t worry if this seems complex. The following tutorials will explain all this in detail.
© Ki Yong Sim – [e-mail]