LE Editing meshes without destroying exising weightpaint or texture mapping

[Hitokiri91e]

Title. Say for example I want to create a chimeric creature of sorts from existing skyrim assets. Maybe the head of an elk, body of a werewolf, tail of a slaughterfish.

 

For the sake of this example say I am using the vanilla werewolf skeleton for my final chimera

 

I am aware I will need to repaint weights on many parts of the new mesh, but how can I keep the existing weight paint already on the werewolf body mesh? Seems redundant to repaint weights over a section that already has functional weight paint based on the final skeleton.

 

What is the best way to go about weight painting the 'new' parts i.e the head of the elk and the new tail?

Edited June 23, 2016 by Hitokiri91e

[Di0nysys]

When u scale or move a mesh, you'll need to redo the weightpainting. There's no way around that.

[Hitokiri91e]

How can I clone it or copy it over most efficiently?

[Xerperious]

Well, you can't seriously edit a mesh, like deleting triangles, if you do that you will have to re-UV map the whole thing (and nobody likes to do that) but you can move the mesh and parts of the mesh around.

If you are making what you say, the Skyrim meshes will probably not be high quality enough.

For transfering weight painting in 3Ds Max

- Keep or import the original werewolf mesh

- Add a skin wrap to the other meshes

- Check weight all points

- Click add and click on the original werewolf mesh (Do this for each part of the mesh except the werewolf mesh, it is already weighted)

- Click convert all points (Do this for each part of the mesh except the werewolf mesh)