I am attempting to use a single bone on a mesh (human character) to deform the jaw and create a new morph target. I have added a skin modifier to my mesh, then added the jaw bone, and then clicked on edit envelopes for that bone.

The problem I am having is that every single vertex within the mesh is highlighted in red, indicating that they are all being affected by the bone. There is no falloff, and no matter what I try I cannot get the envelope to only affect the vertices within the envelope’s range.

I’m probably just missing something really basic. Any help would be appreciated. I have attached a screenshot.

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Try to switch the vertex weights from absolute to relative (the A/R toggle in the Envelope Properties group). This might help editing the envelopes.

max 9
Photoshop CS3
Windows XP
tin box + plug
Wacom Intuos3

I did as you suggested but all the vertices are still red. Thanks anyway!

The weights on any vertex need to add up to 1.0.  If you only have one bone, they will all be weighted 1.0 to that bone. You’ll need another bone (like for the head) if you want to weight those verts differently.

Uncheck “Weight All Vertices” found in Advanced Parameters. Although I agree that you should use more than one bone in any rig.
A totally different approach, but for a simple mouth open - mouth closed anim, I would use a morph target instead of bones.

I would suggest that you should add helpers (point helpers are the most versatile and display better than dummies)
for the whole face. If you are using a bone rig to generate morphs, why not go all the way and rig the face.

It may seem tedious at first, but when you are done, you would have learned a lot about skinning and you’d be
able to make changes to the morphs by tweaking some key frames instead of remodeling a target.

It was the “weight all vertices” option in advanced parameters that was causing the problem. Thanks Samab and everyone else for all your help. Greatly appreciated.