resetSkinJoint

resetSkinJoint - Skin Reset Maya Plugin by Michael B. Comet
Copyright ©2004 Michael B. Comet

    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
    the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
    (at your option) any later version.

    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU General Public License for more details.

    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
    along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
    Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA

    For information on poseDeformer contact:
        Michael B. Comet - comet@comet-cartoons.com
        or visit http://www.comet-cartooons.com/toons/

DESCRIPTION:

This plugin provides a simple way to easily "reset" any joint used in a Maya skinCluster, so that it's current transform (position, rotation, scale) becomes the bind transform, as if it was just bound.

This allows easily adjustment the rest pose of the joint after skinning, without having to unskin, and then reskin and reload weights. This also resets the bindPose data so any bindPose nodes are also corrected.

REQUIREMENTS:

This recompiled plugin requires a Windows version of Maya 6.0.

INSTALL:

1. Quit Maya if it is running.

2. Unzip the contents of the ZIP file.

3. Copy the resetSkinJoint.mll to the Maya binary plugin path where you installed Maya. This is typically:
           C:\Program Files\Alias\Maya6.0\bin\plug-ins\

4. Restart Maya.

5. Open to the menu for Window | Setting/Preferences | Plug-in Manager...

6. Look for the "resetSkinJoint.mll" entry in the window. Choose "loaded" to load the plugin. You can also check the "auto load" box so that the plugin is loaded automatically every time you start Maya.

7. Close the dialog.

8. Choose File | Save Preferences to make sure your prefs are saved.

9. The plugin is now loaded and installed, you can now use the new MEL command called "resetSkinJoint".

USAGE:

1. Make some joints and skin them to a mesh.

2. Move one or more of the joints to some other location other then where they were bound.

3. Select the same joints you moved (and any of their children) and type in "resetSkinJoint" without quotes into the script editor or command line and enter it.

4. The joints will now work as if this is where you originally skinned them. You can undo if desired.

   IMPORTANT: If you have a hierarchy of joints, you should select ALL the children that are skinned in addition to the one you want to reset, otherwise you will have only reset the parent joint and not the joints below, so the mesh may not look or function as expected.