Rigging a gauntlet

[zprospero]

I have successfully rigged helmets/hats to the head bone before thanks to one of LHammond's excellent articles.

 

Now, I would like to be able to rig gloves/gauntlets so they animate properly.

 

Let me first be clear that I'm not talking about newly created gauntlets, so no weight-painting needed. I'm using Bethesda meshes.

 

Does anyone know of any articles/tutorials (like this one: Custom Helmets ) that cover this?

[LHammonds]

Well, if you are using the existing meshes and just "push" the existing verts around, there is no need to do any skinning / weight painting. However, if you add any geometry, you will need to weight-paint those verticies.

 

It might be easier to do this:

 

1. Import the gauntlet you wish to modify.
   
2. Make a duplicate of the gauntlet and move it to a different layer so it stays out of your way during your modification of the original.
   
3. When done making changes to the 1st gauntlet, delete all vertex groups.
   
4. Select both layers so you can see both meshes (wireframe mode might be best used here).
   
5. Select both meshes and run the script called Bone Weight Copy
   
6. Delete the unmodified version and then see if your new version works OK. Depending on the kinds of changes made, you might need to tweak it a little.

LHammonds

[zprospero]

Thank you, but I'm afraid I explained what I was trying to do very poorly. Sorry about that.

 

What I want to do is attach gauntlets to a clothing/armor mesh and have them still animate properly.

[LHammonds]

Seems more simple than you expect I think.

 

If you have a Daedric gauntlett and Daedric cuirass and want to join them together, you simply import both pieces of armor and follow this tutorial as if it were just one piece that you imported.

 

But once you have the armor exported, you then need to add it to the construction set but you need to make sure the NIF file takes up both the cuirass and gauntlet slots...similar to how a full helm takes up the hair and head slots.

 

LHammonds

[zprospero]

Indeed it is simpler than I was expecting. Thank you very much!

 

I just realized I've never given you a kudo, so I gave you one.

 

Thank you for being so helpful, and for the excellent job you do here as an admin.

[zprospero]

Okay, I've almost got it working, but I get an error message when I try and put it on an NPC in the CS I get an error message:

 

"Could not find parent node extra data for '.../myMesh.nif'"

 

Did I skip a step?

[LHammonds]

I'm guessing you have an object that is not parented to the skeleton. To check this, select the skeleton and move it around. All pieces of armor should move with it (then press ESC to cancel the move)

 

LHammonds