EP03 — Overview

1. Preparing the DCC

• Rigging (bone setup) is complete; only skinning remains.
• Add a short test animation to the scene so you can check poses and motion while skinning.
• Frame 0 = bind pose — it must match your skinning start pose.
• Recommended: dual monitors with DCC on the left and SLS on the right.

2. DCC Connection and First Pick

1. Add a Skin modifier to the mesh and assign skin bones (initial weights can be broken).
2. In SLS, select your DCC from the DCC combo → confirm the green indicator (connected).
3. Pick — imports the mesh's weights, geometry, and bone hierarchy.

Right after Pick: The test animation is also cached inside SLS (BoneAniCache). Even with the DCC closed, you can play the SLS viewport timeline to check deformation results in real time.

First Apply to Skin: Add Root to a layer → Flood 1.0 → click > Apply to Skin in the toolbar for a basic test.
An Influence limit of 8 warning may appear on the first Push.

3. UI Panel Overview

Layers (Layer Stack)

• The core panel for stacking weights like Photoshop layers.
• Each layer has: Influence (bones), Weight, and Mask (region).
• Lower layers are the base; upper layers override within the mask area.

Skin Desk

• Shows your currently visible working meshes.

Skin Archive

• The left-side drawer — a warehouse of all meshes in the project.
• Manage Vis (show/hide) and St (active slot).

Influence Panel

• Lists the bones affecting the selected layer.
• Used filter: shows only bones with actual weight values.

Hierarchy (right-side drawer)

4. The Seg Bone Concept

• Main bone (e.g., Spine1): controls the rig, handles scale.
• Seg bone (e.g., Spine1_Seg): the bone that actually receives the skin. Placed as a child of the main bone to isolate scale effects.
• When skinning: use the *_Seg bones from the Hierarchy as your Influences.

5. Viewport · Brushes