Paint Skin Weights Always Adds
 

I'm trying to remove some of the influence of joints on certain areas on my skin which I did a Smooth Bind on. I thought that choosing replace and painting over white areas would turn those areas black to reduce influence. However, choosing Replace, Add, or Smooth all seem to turn the areas painted white. Any ideas what the problem is?

Thanks,
Stu

make sure you are not holding weights on other joints. that may prevent artisan to do the operation correctly due to normalization.
in other words if there aren't other joints for the weights to go to, maya will keep them white, or sometimes really mess things up
. other than that be sure u are not hitting the flood button by mistake....
good luck

You cannot paint weight away. In order to remove an area from a certain bone's influence, you have to paint that influence on to another bone.

In your Paint Weights tool settings make sure that Normalize Weights is set to interactive not Post or Off. I hope this helps.

JGG