This skinning and weighting toolset includes some practical tools to help in the skinning process, and I have often used them in production to save time, of course it also helps when things are modeled properly, but that’s not always the case.

This is a collection of tools put into a shelf for ease of use. After downloading the script, load it into Maya with the load shelf button.

Here’s a breakdown of what they all do:

Set:*    select vertices followed by a joint, this will weigh the vertices to that joint with a value of 1, and -create a selection set for future use.

Sel:*     select 2 or more of these sets that were create, and it will select vertices between the two groups that are connected

Paint weight:  Maya’s default paint weight tool

Paint select tool: Maya’s paint select tool

Hold on:  select joints you want to work with, hit this button, now all the other joints in the scene are locked, and you are only affecting weights between your selected joints (useful for smoothing between let’s say an upper and lower arm, and you don’t want the hand or chest to get garbage weight values )

Hold off:   VERY IMPORTANT select any joint, run this tool, it unlocks all the joints in the scene, if you don’t unlock them, nothing will happen as you do your weights.

W100:** select vertices followed by a joint, this will weight your selection to 100%

W50:** select vertices followed by a joint, this will weight your selection to 50%

W20:** select vertices followed by a joint, this will weight your selection to 20%

* I personally don’t use these two anymore, but in some situations where it’s practical to reset the weights more than once it can save time.

** This will work on any kind of object // weighted combination, so faces that are weighted to curves for example, can be modified with this.

COMING SOON: 

Wsmart:  select vertices followed by any number of joints, and it will divide the weight between them equally.

Text tutorial on workflow.