Introduction to skinning in Blender
As I explained in the introduction to this chapter, skinning is where we tell the 3D model how to deform and follow the bones. We need a way to tell the 3D software what part of the 3D model we want to follow, which bones, how much, and how to blend between them. We call this skin deformation, generally. Skinning is applied to the vertices of the 3D model. Editing the amount a vertex is deformed by a bone is called editing its weights.
There are mainly two kinds of skin deformations:
- Rigid, where the vertices follow the bone at 100%.
- Blended, in which two main areas of the 3D model meet and are deformed by two different bones. The blend is to have a smooth transition between them, such as an elbow or a knee.
It is the blended deformations where things can get tough in certain circumstances where one vertex can be influenced by not just two, but three, four, or even five bones at the same time. A typically difficult area to skin...
