bone weight for custom armor question.

[JoKelly]

normally I could copy the bone weights for a mesh from another mesh, like Upperbody for cloth. but if the there is an object "large" in my mesh that supposed to be metal,

should it be a separate mesh with a different weight and imported into the final .Nif and attached to the appropriate node?

 

I know that I could just combine it all and paint it, but I have never been good at weight painting. which is why I usually only do buildings and clutter. LOL

Edited December 27, 2016 by JoKelly

[madmongo]

If the piece is metal, I'm assuming that it doesn't bend. If this is true, then what I generally do is weight it 100 percent to a single bone, whichever bone makes the most sense for it, and zero weight it to all other bones in the armature. That way that particular armor piece only moves with that bone and doesn't flex or change shape based on any other bones. Say for example this was an armored shield piece that attaches to someone's back. You wouldn't want that to flex, you'd want to just weight it to one of the spine bones and that's it.

 

If it needs to bend and flex then weight it to the various bones that control its flexing. A knee plate is going to need to flex around a bit as the player's leg bends, for example, so you'd weight that to both the upper and lower leg bones.

 

If you are using Blender, you can have Blender auto-weight the mesh when you parent it to the armature. I don't know if newer versions are better, but Blender 2.49's auto weighting is a bit screwy. I usually end up going bone by bone through the mesh and fixing the mess that Blender made out of it. It's a bit faster than hand painting all of the weights though.

 

Blender can also assign the same weight value to all nodes in the mesh very easily, which helps when you want to paint a particular value to something like a large metal plate, or if you want to clear out all of the weights for a particular bone (like when Blender "helpfully" weights foot and leg bones to your chest piece so that the entire chest distorts when the player walks... stupid Blender). I don't remember the keyboard shortcut for it but I have it on a cheat sheet at home and I can post it later tonight.

 

I personally like keeping metal plates and such as separate pieces instead of combing them all into one mesh just because that makes it a lot easier to edit and move things around if I want to change the style of the armor later.

[JoKelly]

If the piece is metal, I'm assuming that it doesn't bend. If this is true, then what I generally do is weight it 100 percent to a single bone, whichever bone makes the most sense for it, and zero weight it to all other bones in the armature. That way that particular armor piece only moves with that bone and doesn't flex or change shape based on any other bones. Say for example this was an armored shield piece that attaches to someone's back. You wouldn't want that to flex, you'd want to just weight it to one of the spine bones and that's it.

 

If it needs to bend and flex then weight it to the various bones that control its flexing. A knee plate is going to need to flex around a bit as the player's leg bends, for example, so you'd weight that to both the upper and lower leg bones.

 

If you are using Blender, you can have Blender auto-weight the mesh when you parent it to the armature. I don't know if newer versions are better, but Blender 2.49's auto weighting is a bit screwy. I usually end up going bone by bone through the mesh and fixing the mess that Blender made out of it. It's a bit faster than hand painting all of the weights though.

 

Blender can also assign the same weight value to all nodes in the mesh very easily, which helps when you want to paint a particular value to something like a large metal plate, or if you want to clear out all of the weights for a particular bone (like when Blender "helpfully" weights foot and leg bones to your chest piece so that the entire chest distorts when the player walks... stupid Blender). I don't remember the keyboard shortcut for it but I have it on a cheat sheet at home and I can post it later tonight.

 

I personally like keeping metal plates and such as separate pieces instead of combing them all into one mesh just because that makes it a lot easier to edit and move things around if I want to change the style of the armor later.

Thanks for the info. I have a bad habit of over thinking things some times. Weight painting is one of those things that make my eyes cross some times. Most of the tut's say join it all and personally I'm not a fan of doing that.

[madmongo]

To assign the same weight value to all of the nodes in the selected mesh in Blender, press F to select faces, A to select all, then shift-K to assign the current weight value to all nodes.

[JoKelly]

To assign the same weight value to all of the nodes in the selected mesh in Blender, press F to select faces, A to select all, then shift-K to assign the current weight value to all nodes.

Thanks, I've added that note to my things to know about modding file.