Pipeline 1: Jetpack Jones - Binding & Weight Grouping Mesh

  With the skeleton complete, we are now going to bind the Mesh. Working on the left boot first, we select the joint chain from the knee down and then use the bind skin tool (with "selected joints" in use). Currently there is some odd deformation when moving the joints, so selecting the boot geometry and going into paint weights tool, we flood the weights all to the knee (areas that are "painted" to a joint will be white, becoming grey the less influence a joint has). 

  Working from the knee downwards, we select vertices that we want to be controlled by the joint (this is about halfway to begin with) and then flood to that area. We continue this downwards to the tip of the foot, the last joint won't have any weights painting to them as its a "null" joint.

  To make bind quicker for the other boot, we can use the mirror skin weights tool. This is done by selecting the left boot, then the right and then mirroring. This makes identical weight binding.

  For the trousers, we start by selecting the joints from the pelvis down to the shin and the lower ribbon spine joint, then choosing to bind the skin. Like the boots, we flood the pelvis first and on the left hand side, we choose the vertices we what to be influenced by which joint (The trousers are quite close, so it's best to do it in the front view). As before, we mirror the paint weights across the trousers.

  We continue this process up the to torso and head. As the torso is the largest area, we choose both the upper and lower parts of the skeleton then bind the skin (changing the option to joint hierarchy).

  For the torso, we flood the chest joint to 100% and work though from the fingers on the left side, mirroring across when happy. 

The head is to be bound to the chest, neck and second neck joints. The belt loops are parented to the pelvis joint, whilst the head objects are parented to the top neck joint. These elements will be painted later to give a better effect.