Skinning the Character

Making the skin attached to the bones

Open the file“alien with arms and bones and rigging.max”

Okay now its time for the fun to begin

Unfreeze the body at this point….

Hide everything except Box01 or whatever the alien body is named

Apply a Skin modifier to the alien

Choose Add and select all the bones..

By grabbing the handles and moving them you can adjust how much of the skin will be affected by that bone.

While moving the inside handles controls how much of an effect the bone has on the skin

You probably want something set like this….

Don’t forget to check the top view too….

Just for fun the point controller for the lower arm and move it.

and

Notice that the skin follows the arm…..

At this point you could check the envelopes on all the bones…..

Don’t worry about the tip bones…….

Testing out the Skin….

Go to the perspective view

Unhide Everything….

Hide the bones

Hide the IK Chains…

Leave unhidden the skin and the pointcontrollers… It should look something like this

By grabbing the point controllers you should be able to move his arms and the skin should follow…

Test all the controllers… If any parts of the skin are left behind you will have to increase the size of the envelope to make all the vertices inside the envelope.