Rig 100% done. Now, to combine shield and sword?

[Anonymous]

Hey, 

I need some help. 


My client gave me a model to rig. I rig'd it. He suggested that I detach the sword and shield from the warrior to properly rig it, and because the shield has to be rotated so when the character guards/attacks, etc, it's not pointing the wrong way. 

So, I grabbed the verts, and just separated the shield and sword, and moved them.

Now, I grab the verts of the shield and sword, select the model, and combine. Done.


Problem is, the shield and sword aren't following the rig/animation controls. If I click on the model, the mesh of the character, the shield, and the sword are selected. Am I doing something wrong?

 I expected to have to paint the weights of the sword/shield to the hands, but here's another problem.

 When I click the paint weight tool, instead of the model turning black, I just get the brush with an X through it. I've never seen that before. 

Also- the sword and shield HAVE to be combined to the mesh, no parenting or any other way around it. The game engine this is for has to register this as 1 object, not 3. 

Please help!

[BradClarkRiggingDojo]

you can try deleting non deformer history to clean up the left over nodes on the geo. If it works it should fix your red x problem. I don't get why you needed to separate them to move them You can also just copy the skinning back on to the good mesh with copy skin weights. There are a few ways to deal with it.

[Anonymous]

Brad, 

 My client actually told me an hour ago to delete non-deformer history (after I re-rigged it). I didn't know to do that, or that doing that would clean up left over nodes. 

As far as moving the shield (the sword didn't nead to be moved in all honesty)- the model was created in an A-Pose with arms down to the side, with the shield hovering next to the left arm. Because the arms were up and down (as opposed to T-pose), and the shield was also modeled up and down, if the character was rigged as is then when the warrior would do any block or guard animation the shield would be horizontal, which is not how shields are held, especially since the shield is elongated and ovalesque, instead of a generic circle shield. Therefore I had to select shield verts, separate, move to side, rotate and reposition, so now when the character blocks the shield is facing the right way. 

As for copying the skin weights- I tried to export them to put them on the good mesh, but when I did things went haywire and it caused all sorts of problems. I wish I had more experience painting weights, rigging and skinning, but I am more of a classically trained animator, not a technical one. So, with that said, I am still learning. 

Anyways, I did everything (probably) the difficult way instead of the smart way. Regardless, it's working, and I do thank you for your input. I appreciate your time and your response. 

All the best

-Kenny

[BradClarkRiggingDojo]

You found it now correct- the delete non-deformer history? Sometimes it
works fine, others it blows up the mesh 🙂

I guess I don't know why you had to separate them to move them, why not
just move and rotate the shield verts with out the detach?


@Copy skin weights- you don't need to export them you can just duplicate
the mesh and skin it , then select the old mesh and new mesh and do a
Skin -edit smooth skin- copy skin weights to transfer the weights to the
fixed mesh. It works well but why I asked about the detach, since it
seemed like extra work. If you need to move verts on an object that is
skinned, with it selected you can go to edit deformers- display
intermediate objects and it will show the mesh that is feeding in to the
skinned geo. You can edit/move verts/ change uvs here all you want and
it all is before the skinning gets it in the graph.



These kind of problems are why I am back on the Area and more active
again to get an idea of what is still a struggle and sticking points in
3d training for animators and tech art so we can fix that at Rigging Dojo.


Glad to help and good luck.

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~ "Is this episode going on the air live?"~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~ "No, Homer. Very few cartoons are broadcast live-~~~~~~
~~~~~~ It's a terrible strain on the animators' wrists."~~~~~~
Brad Clark
Motion Editor/Animator/Character TD...Austin TX
Co-Founder / Mentor @ www.RiggingDojo.com