Importing Weights
When I’m attempting to rig a mesh I tend to save the skeleton definition and the joint template to speed recovery from Maya crashes. After the crash or if I need to make an edit - I’ll reopen the mesh, create a new ART character, load the skeleton definition, and load the joint template.
At this point there is no skeleton to bind to. I move on to the Deformation Setup screen which triggers the skeleton creation. I don’t let ART create weights for the proxy mesh.
Then I get a series of message boxes telling me a weight map has been found for the various mesh segments and asking if I want to import / import all / skip. Selecting Import will typically crash Maya and doesn’t make sense as the workflow has never given me a chance to bind the skeleton and ART doesn’t seem to attempt this binding.
So to avoid a crash I must cancel every import query. It would be great to see some improvements on how rigging works with custom mesh but at the very least it would be huge help to give us a ‘cancel all’ which would eliminate dozens of mouse clicks on my character.