Chapter 12 Bones and Rigging 519
Bone Weights
In LightWave, the relative ???heft,???or resistance
to motion, of objects (or portions of
objects), is controlled by a special type of
UV surface map called a weight map,
which assigns weight values to points on
a model??™s surface. LightWave provides
several methods of generating weight
maps, but one of the quickest is Modeler??™s
Bone Weights tool.
You activate the Make Bone Weight
Map panel (Figure 12.31) by selecting a
bone or an object associated with a
bone and clicking Bone Weight on Modeler??™s Map tab. The panel lets you use the selected
bones to generate weight-map settings for the associated objects, without having to select
individual points or polygons on those objects. This tool can be a real time-saver, and
often provides a great first step for creating maps that you can fine-tune later by tweaking
the settings for individual points. The Bone Weights tool can also be used to make
global changes to weight maps you??™ve built the ???old-fashioned???way??”by specifying weight
values for individual points and polygons.
To use the Bone Weights tool, you must first set up Skelegons, which we??™ll be discussing
shortly.
Pages:
616
617
618
619
620
621
622
623
624
625
626
627
628
629
630
631
632
633
634
635
636
637
638
639
640