I was wondering is anyone had any links for maya skinning tutorials or animation especially for human characters for games. I can make incredible characters but after I skin them, its very hard for me to make there animations look good. any good books if you dont have any links? thanx

Do you mean skinning as in binding the geometry to the skeleton/weighting the vertices or are you referring to skinning as in texturing ''''player skins'''' etc.

sorry, I ment binding the skeletons and setting them up for good animation. Whats rigid skinning, think it said in the maya docs that it was ''Each vertex can only be assigned to one bone''? Not sure how it works but all the characters Ive made have been with smooth skinning. And I manually edit some of the weights with the component editor, but its pretty hard to set up a flexible character that can perform all human movements that way without looking deformed sometimes. Any tips? thanx for the reply

Here''s a tip: to assign/edit vertex weights use the "Paint Skin Weights" tool. That makes the process really easy and intuitive: white is fully bound, black is not bound at all, and grey is accordingly partial weighted.

Also, Make sure you double or triple the polygons around the joints, torso and necks.