I’m a complete beginner to Maya and have purchased the set of Autodesk’s ‘Learning Autodesk Maya’ books.

I’ve worked in 3D for a while but primarily in C4D, and always in architecture, this is my first real exploration into character work.

I’m not sure if anyone here is familiar with the book I’m talking about but hopefully someone can help regardless. I’m modelling a penguin from the movie Surf’s Up, and while the modelling and texturing went fine, I set up the skeleton and the skin seems to be bound correctly, but I’m having major issues with the joint weighting using the painting tool.

I’ve got one side of my model weighted fine, but when I came to do the other side, for example the shoulder joint, the chest polys are moving despite the fact they’re clearly black on the paint weights tool. I’ve gone over the whole model with the remove weight brush and repainted the correct areas but this unwanted weighting still persists.

Is there something I’m doing wrong? I’m thinking it could be hidden geometry but then I mirrored the mesh when I was modelling and the other side was fine so I can’t see how hidden geometry could have got in the completed mesh. Or is it something else?

Any help and advice would be fantastic.

Thanks