What is Skin Weight

In 3D world, the animations of an object can be morph-based or bone-base. The latter one simulates the real animal movements, that is, triggered by bones.

The object's surface can be triggered by the bones only after it ever underwent Bone-Skinned procedure. But actually, the triggered targets are the vertices on the object meshes.

Before bone-skinning procedure	After bone-skinning procedure

However, each vertex can be triggered to move by more than one bone. Therefore, the percentage of the influences from different bones must be defined, automatically or manually, right after the bone-skinned procedure is done, which is so-called skin weight.

Vertices are influenced by two bones with 50% weights from each	Vertices are influenced by one bone with 100% weight

In Character Creator, you can assign the skin weights of the vertices on clothes or hairs automatically or manually with painting brushes.