Skinning a car

1. combine mesh

2.Create Root_bone (name it)   Animation-Skeletone-Joint Tool
   - create all other joints from the root bone ( in outliner select the Root_bone every time before drawing a new joint) This will parent them to root bone
   - NAME THEM ALL!  This is very important, you will need those names when it will come to skinning


3. create controllers - Create-NURB Primitives- circle  (name them for each part)

4. when controllers positioned snap pivot of controllers to joint's centre where required and then Freeze transformation and delete history.

5. lock attributes of controllers that you don't want to be moved ( Transition/Rotation Y/X/Z exc. )
6. Select controller - shift select joint - use constrain ( when you you've done constrain joint must become purple every time you click on controller, if it is other way around then it means you've done constrain wrong. Parent must be selected first.)

7. When all the controllers are created, frozen with clear history and parented or constrained to the right joint, you can start skinning. But even when model is skinned new joint can be added and constrained to other controllers.

8. To skin the model select top of your joint hierarchy, then mesh, then go to Skin-bind skin-smooth bind. it is preferable not to select more than 2 Max Influences (that means one vertex can be influenced by two joints) But for hard surface it probably better to set it to 1.

Now when skin is applied the best way to skin hard surface object is with component editor. Select the vertices, e.g. all wheel vertices, then go to
-Window->General Editors->Component Editor
-there select Smooth Skin
- and set the influence of the joint you want to 1 (100%) and all joint you don't want to 0 (0%)
-not it's just a matter of time to finish it.