Deformation testing problem
 

I am taking an animation course at my local community college where we are learning to design game characters. This course also includes a book called "Game Character Development With Maya". At this point in class, I am doing deformation testing. This includes smooth skin binding different sections of the character one at a time. For example, binding just the arm first, and check to see if the character deforms correctly. Once that is done, I would then unbind it, and move on to the next section of my character. This is for the purpose of only seeing if the character has enough polygons to deform correctly. So in the book, it explains that before I UV map my character, I should do these deformation test first. However, I came accross a point that I am unable to paint weights on certain areas of my character. After reading the help files of Maya, it states that the UV maps should be clean and free of overlapping UV's. So I am assuming this is why I am unable to paint the weights on my character. However, the problem is that the book wants me to do this before mapping. This is because it states that I will be adding more polygons to the character on the areas that do not deform properly. So if I am painting weights on my character for only deformation purposes, is there a way that I could get around the UV mapping rule since it would not make sense to uv map, add more polygons to my character, and then UV map the character again?