Apply Envelop tool under Skin modifier to the hand; add all the bones to it by clicking on the button of “Add”, a window of “Select Bones” pops up as below, this function is to enable the bones and skin to be attached together.

Tick the Vertices on the right of the window to check influence of the fingers in between, and adjust the effect by increasing or decreasing the value of the Weight Properties among the relevant joints, so that the fingers will do the activities separately without influencing the others.

By completing the steps above, the fingers can move beautifully in between. However, in order to rotate the fingers towards certain direction, Point under the Helper menu is added here to fulfill this process.

Right click the bone and select “Wire Parameters”, follow “Transform-Rotation-Y Rotation”, then point the line to the green Point on the left side of the screen, a window of “Parameter Writing” pops up, select the second arrow and then click “Connect” button, both two Y Rotation becomes red and green. Connect all the rest bones by create four more Points.

Learning outcome

Envelop is tool to attach the skin and bones together, it is very important that the fingers can move or rotate respectively without influencing the rest, otherwise it will really break the whole hands’ activity. The direction of the rotation is difficult to distinguish, however, if double check the axis on the left bottom of the screen, we will find it easier that our expectation. For instance, the last picture above is the right hand, move our right hand upward and rotate the thumb and it will point to exactly the same direction as Y-direction shown above. Thus, the character or elements we create in the 3d max follows the same rules of the human being movements! That is the reason we can mimic our unique behavior as well as the emotion through the virtual environment!